


Through the Mirror

by Steelneko



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Minor Character Death, Parallel Universes, Violence, over 30000 words, questionable uses of quantum physics, split narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steelneko/pseuds/Steelneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An accident leaves Kotetsu stranded in an alternate universe where things went very differently for the Brooks family, and the world around them. He tries to unravel the secrets of this alternate world, as back on the other side on the quantum divide, Barnaby tries to find a way to bring his partner back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The original version of this story was posted [here](http://t-and-b-anon.dreamwidth.org/1910.html?thread=3808374#cmt3808374) to the Tiger & Bunny Anon Meme.

_February 18th, NC 1980  
Earth 1_

 

"--and then we're going to visit the zoo, and ride the carousel together, and eat ice cream while watching the giraffes, and Kaede will tell me just how cool her Papa is for treating her to the Greatest Weekend Ever during her sleepover in the big city."

"Oh really." Even through the speakers in the helmet of his power suit, Kotetsu could hear the disbelief in his partner's voice. He was willing to bet that Bunny was rolling his eyes at that very moment. "And have you actually _asked_ your daughter what she wants to do in Sternbild for her birthday weekend?"

Kotetsu took a running leap off the top of the building, and sailed across the street far below to the next rooftop over. Bunny followed behind, easily landing on top of the warehouse next to him.

"Well, no," Kotetsu admitted, "but she used to love going to the zoo all the time when she was little, so I know she likes it there." He crept slowly across the warehouse roof, trying to blend in with the winter evening shadows. Bunny circled around the far edge, heading for the other side of a maintenance elevator shaft sticking out of the top of the building. With his scanners, Kotetsu could kind of make out the other Second League heroes slowly closing in on their positions atop the nearby buildings.

"Kotetsu, Kaede is turning twelve years old at the end of the month. Kids at that age are very concerned with being 'cool', and I hate to tell you this, but trips to the zoo are not exactly popular among pre-teens. You really should just call her and ask her what she wants to do, instead of making baseless assumptions."

Kotetsu pouted. " _I_ like going to the zoo."

Agnes' voice crackled through his helmet. "Would you two stop the idle chitchat for just a moment and focus on the task at hand?"

"Of course. My apologies, Ms Agnes," Bunny said. He crouched down on the opposite side of the elevator shaft, and put a hand up to his helmet to activate the sensors in his suit. Kotetsu copied his move. The thermal imaging readout on his heads-up display screen showed one human-sized heat source moving about in the building below them.

"So why are we here again?" he asked.

"Honestly, do you never listen to my briefings?" asked Agnes, annoyance clear in her voice. "The police have been getting reports of odd unregistered technology that's been appearing in this area since Christmas. One of the suspects they caught with it fingered this warehouse as the source. We want you to find out what's going on here, and why. It probably won't be anything exciting enough to base a whole episode around, but it's still something that needs dealing with, which is why we're sending you."

"Understood," Bunny said. Kotetsu could see his rabbity helmet bob up and down in a nod.

Agnes sighed. "Barnaby, you really are wasting your brilliant, ratings-enhancing talents out here in the Second League with its irregular filming schedule. Are you sure you won't move back up to the First League?"

"As I've told you three times already, Ms Agnes, Kotetsu is my partner. We are a team set. If I move back to the main hero roster, it's only in conjunction with him."

There was a brief silence before Agnes spoke again. "I'll propose the idea of promoting both of you at the next Hero TV production committee board meeting," she said bitterly.

Kotetsu grinned inside his helmet. "That's so nice of you."

"Just get to work," Agnes snapped.

"And what do you want us to do?" Ms Violet radioed in. Kotetsu scanned the other nearby buildings to try and figure out which one of the three dark Second League hero blobs was her, but it was too hard to make out details in the light of the setting sun.

"Hold position for now. If on the rare chance anything goes wrong inside, move in immediately."

"Roger that," Ms Violet said.

Kotetsu reached for the gap in the middle of the shaft and grabbed one side of the dilapidated elevator door. The building had officially been abandoned for years and years, and all the metal pieces on the outside had started to rust over through lack of care. One good yank should've been enough to force it open. "On the count of three," he said to Bunny, who followed his lead by gripping the other half of the elevator door. "One, two, THREE."

They pulled at the same time, and the doors ground open with a loud metallic whine. They froze, but after thirty seconds passed with nothing happening, Kotetsu suspected that they probably hadn't been heard

Bunny leaned in and peered down the elevator shaft. "The elevator's long gone, and it looks like a six storey drop down. The winch at the top is still holding up, but there's no car connected to it." He looked over at Kotetsu. "Are you okay without...?"

"I got this," Kotetsu said. He pointed his grappling hook line at the winch and fired, hearing the clunk as the hook tightened into place. He beckoned Barnaby over. "C'mon, I'll give you a ride down."

Bunny wrapped his arms around his partner, and Kotetsu slowly lowered them down the elevator shaft. "Looks like I'm the one who gets to carry you today," Kotetsu said gleefully.

"Oh shut up, Old Man," replied Bunny, but there was no venom behind his words.

They landed as gently as was possible in power armour, and Kotetsu made sure that both he and Bunny had decent footing before retracting his grappling hook. It disentangled from the winch and slid back into his suit with a very satisfying click.

The door at the bottom of the elevator shaft had fallen off its hinges, and was easily pushed aside. The warehouse looked to be the remains of some abandoned shipping and packaging plant, which had probably been forced out of business as this part of the Bronze Stage had suffered urban decay. Dusty tables covered with decaying cardboard boxes littered the room. Faded posters bearing the logo Charon Shipping were starting to peel off from where they’d been tacked up on the walls. A trail of footprints led from a side door with a lock to an open storage area at the back, which had light seeping around the stacks of old boxes piled up in front of it.

Bunny pointed towards the light. Kotetsu nodded and followed him towards it.

They crept slowly and carefully towards the light source. Kotetsu tried to fight against the urge to just barge in and demand what was going on here, which would not only spoil the surprise but probably get both Bunny and Agnes mad at him, and frighten off whoever was inside to boot. He checked his thermal sensor again to make sure that the person was still around. It seemed like they were headed in the right direction.

The two heroes finally reached the end of the room and squatted behind a stack of waist-high boxes, giving them their first look into the room beyond.

There was a giant machine set up against one of the walls in the storage area. Kotetsu had no idea what it was supposed to do, since mechanics had never particularly been his forté, but he could see that it was covered in all kinds of blinking lights and holographic monitor screens and sensor readouts ticking along. More confusing was the large metal arch set against one side of the machine, and bolted firmly into the floor at the bottom. It looked like a door frame, and was certainly tall enough for someone to walk through, but there was nothing but a flat wall behind it. There seemed to be five or six ceiling-mounted lasers pointed at it, for reasons Kotetsu couldn't even guess at. Was the maker expecting to be attacked by something inside the wall?

"Look over there," Bunny said quietly, pointing over to the far side of the room. There was a stack of much newer cardboard boxes piled up next to the outside door, with strange-looking mechanical devices sticking out of them, and pieces of crumpled up newspaper shoved in to fill the extra space.

"Guess we’re in the right place," Kotetsu said. "But what is all this?"

A supply closet door opposite the machine was flung open, and a short man in a dark jacket brought out a stack of empty boxes, muttering to himself all the way. He set them down on the floor near the arch, and started pushing buttons on the machine console. There was a whir as a portable electric generator started up and the monitors started cycling through all kinds of computer code screens more quickly than Kotetsu could follow.

And then the lasers started charging.

Kotetsu couldn't take this sneaking around anymore. He still had no idea what was going on, but there was no way any of this set-up meant something good. Let Agnes yell at him if she wanted to, but there was no way he was going to sit idly by and let this machine run through… whatever it did. He launched himself over the row of boxes into the room beyond. Bunny lunged for Kotetsu's arm to stop him, but missed.

The strange little man turned in shock at the noise of Kotetsu's landing. "What, who," he stammered out.

"I don't know what you're doing here, or where you got all this stuff, but I think you need to explain, now," Kotetsu said, pointing an accusing finger at the man.

"No no no, you can't be here. Not now, not when I've started it," said the man, a French accent colouring his voice. He spun back to the machine and tried pushing more buttons. "I can't stop it once it's started."

With a loud sigh, Bunny vaulted into the storage area too, and knelt over to more closely examine the contents of the open boxes. "These seem to be illegal weapons, unlike any I’ve seen before. Where are you getting these?"

The whine from the lasers got louder as they neared charged mode. Kotetsu stepped in front of the arch to get a look at both the man and the machine. The man pulled a gun from out of his pocket and shakily pointed it Kotetsu. Bunny lunged forward to knock it out of his grip and put a hand on the man's shoulder. "You should probably answer the question, lest we have to arrest you for illegal possession."

"No!" the man yelled, in a state of panic now. "Just leave!"

Kotetsu scowled, as the machine's whine reached almost painful levels. "Fine. You can't shut this machine down yourself? There's always the old-fashioned way of turning something off." The world took on a blue tinge as he activated his Hundred Power.

"No! Don't!" screamed the man as Kotetsu slammed a fist into the machine.

A sudden massive energy shock surged through him, and the world exploded into white.


	2. Chapter 2

_February 18th, NC 1980  
Earth 2_

 

Kotetsu felt like his head was going to split open.

It was so much worse than any hangover he'd gotten from a night out drinking with Antonio. Worse than getting punched repeatedly by criminals trying to avoid arrest. Worse than those times Bunny had hit him while his powers were activated.

He carefully opened his eyes, and stars swam across his vision.

And those were all he could see. All the systems in his suit were out, leaving him with nothing to look at but black. He reached up to flip open the faceplate of his helmet.

Kotetsu found himself staring straight up at the roof of a dark warehouse. Dim light from the streetlights lining the road outside filtered in through broken windows, but the whole place was dark and still.

He forced himself to sit up, wincing in pain at the pounding in his head. His Hundred Power had faded away, but that meant far less than it used to these days, so he had no idea how long he'd been out.

He was more than a little surprised to find himself completely alone, though.

"Helloooo? Bunny? Bu~~nny? Anyone?"

The words echoed across the warehouse with no response. He frowned. They wouldn't have all left him here alone, would they? He could understand having to take a perp in, but there'd been four other people out here with him, and not even Agnes would be cruel enough to just leave him here to rot.

Kotetsu pushed himself woozily up to his feet, and brushed some of the dirt off his suit. There seemed to be a whole lot more dust in the place than there had been just a few minutes ago. He tried to orient himself by finding that big noisy machine with all the lasers--

\--only to discover that there was no sign of it ever having been there at all.

"Well this is just _weird_ ," he said aloud to himself. "What the heck happened here? Where'd everybody go?"

There was a beep from somewhere inside his helmet as the backup power systems in his suit booted up. Finally. He pushed the faceplate back down, and watched as the world slowly got clearer as his heads-up display came back online.

But not even being able to see things again made any sense. There was a small track of footprints leading from a side door straight to a bare wall and back, but no other signs of anyone having been around for a long, long time.

"Bunny? Agnes? Guys?" he tried, speaking into the microphone in his helmet. Nothing but static answered him back. He cycled through nearly a dozen different communication channels before any names popped up at all. Oddly enough, there were only five other heroes listed, and one of them -- someone using the code name "Desert Sandstorm" -- he didn't recognize. There was no sign of Bunny or any of the other Second League heroes at all.

Kotetsu finally decided to give up on his partner for the moment and radioed Blue Rose, who seemed to be the closest.

Karina's face popped up in a small video feed. "Hello?" she said. Confusion coloured her words.

"Uh, hey. It's me. You busy right now?"

Her eyes widened at the sight of him. " _Tiger_? When did you... Why are... Where _are_ you?"

"At the old Charon Shipping warehouse in the Bronze Stage. Would you mind giving me a ride back? Looks like I'm all alone here."

She kept on just staring at him. Kotetsu wondered what had gotten into her. "Um, sure?" she said. "I think it'll take about twenty minutes to get there from here, but, yeah, I can give you a ride." She paused. "It's good to see you again after so long," she said before disconnecting.

Kotetsu frowned deeply. What did Karina mean by that? She'd trailed him around all through January after his comeback had been made public.

It was pretty clear that he wasn't going to find any answers by hanging around inside the warehouse, so he followed the trail of footprints out through the unlocked door. The street was empty and the nearby buildings were in similar states of sad decay, so Kotetsu leaned against a streetlight pole in front of the warehouse and tried to puzzle out just what had happened here. His headache slowly eased up from Worst Hangover Ever to Kind Of Annoying while he waited.

He finally looked up when he heard the sound of a motorcycle engine approaching. It pulled up in front of the warehouse before coming to a stop, and the rider flipped down the kickstand.

Kotetsu was deeply surprised at how, well, _covered up_ Blue Rose was. He was well aware of how revealing Karina's outfit was because she certainly enjoyed complaining about it, but he tried not to stare because she was only a couple years older than Kaede for goodness' sake, and kind of like a daughter to him.

But tonight, Blue Rose wore a full body suit in light blue that covered her from the neck down. The thorns on the back were gone, replaced by a rose design on the chest, and a belt with her ice blasters clipped to it around her waist. She still had the hat and the blue wig, but she'd also added an eye piece that seemed to have the same kind of scanners his helmet did.

Even more jarring, all her Pepsi Nex logos were gone.

Blue Rose dismounted the bike, and stared up and down the street, her gaze sliding right past him. She sighed loudly and stretched her arms above her head before wandering over towards Kotetsu.

She leaned in close to look at his suit. "Haven't seen this model before," she said. She reached up and banged a couple times on his helmet.

Kotetsu waved her off. "Hey! Quit it!"

Blue Rose stumbled back a couple steps and stared at him in surprise. "Tiger?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," Kotetsu said. "Who'dja think it was?"

Blue Rose narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Is this a trick?"

"What? Why would you..." Kotetsu pulled the helmet off and pointed to his face. "No, it's me! See?"

She raised an eyebrow and reached up to poke his face. "Seems kinda real..."

"Would you quit doing that!" he said, brushing her hand off.

"Well, I don't know what to think! You call me up out of the blue, and I have no idea what's going on with you. What are you doing in Sternbild? When did you get back to the city? What are you doing in _this_ part of Sternbild? What's with the suit? What happened to your blue costume with the cape?" She jabbed a finger at his chest. "And why are you covered in ads?"

"Uh..." Kotetsu had no idea how to answer. Some of those questions, he was still confused about himself. And others, she really should have known about already. He kept opening and closing his mouth, trying to come up with something to say.

Blue Rose finally just threw up her hands. "Fine. Fine! You don't want to tell me, whatever. But you are gonna have to explain to everyone once we get back to Hero TV. And if you turn out to be a killer robot or something, it is totally not my fault."

Kotetsu's expression darkened at the memory. "I'm not. I promise."

She remounted the motorcycle, and kicked the kickstand up. "Well, get on."

Kotetsu put his helmet back on, and sat down behind her. He grabbed her waist gently, and she took off.

 

 

_Earth 1_

 

The lasers fired, and Wild Tiger disintegrated in a blast of white light.

Barnaby's heart missed a beat.

The machine sputtered and died, and thick black smoke started wafting up from the inside, but there was nothing in the spot where his partner had been seconds before.

"Kotetsu?" he said, and then more desperately, "Kotetsu!"

There was no sound but the muttering of the man in his grip and the whining of the machine as the portable generator ground to a halt.

Thick, heavy anger rose inside him, clouding all his other thoughts. Kotetsu couldn't be dead. Not like that. Not that fast. Not after everything they'd been through together.

His focus narrowed in on the other man in the room with him. "You," he said. Barnaby grabbed the man by the lapels and slammed him against a wall, his eyes blazing blue with power. "You killed him!"

"What? I, what, wait..."

"Do you know what kind of man just died because of you? I swear I will--"

"Barnaby! Stop this!" Agnes' voice barely registered to him. Not even the arrival of the Second League heroes behind him was enough to distract him from his target.

"Wait, wait! Your friend! He's not dead!"

He clenched his fingers tighter around the man's shirt. "What."

"Well, probably. I think."

"Barnaby, get the man's name so we can look him up in the city records," Agnes ordered.

Barnaby grit his teeth. "What's your name?" he demanded.

"Uh, Lucien Tremblay," the man said.

"Well, Lucien Tremblay," Barnaby said, "Talk. Now."

"This--" Lucien gestured to the smoking machine. "--is not a weapon. It's a portal."

"A portal."

"Yes! I found a way to punch through the walls that confine our reality into a different, nearby, quantumly branched universe." He smiled sheepishly. "And then swiped things there I could sell here."

Barnaby just stared at him. "What are you even talking about."

Agnes buzzed back in in his ear. "Lucien Tremblay, age 47. Quantum physicist. It says that he worked for Sternbild University on an experimental project until sometime around last Halloween, when he was caught stealing things from the research labs. Disappeared right after that. There's a warrant out for his arrest, so bring him back with you and I'll give you 200 points."

Barnaby let that information sink in and released his grip on the man's shirt a little. "You're being serious, aren't you?"

Lucien nodded emphatically. "Oh yes, oh yes. But your friend got in the way. The lasers are supposed to hit the doorway structure to open the gateway through, but he was standing in front of it when they went off, and, well, no more friend."

Barnaby leaned in closer. "So bring him back."

"I would, but, well..." Lucien gestured to the machine. Barnaby turned his head to look over his shoulder. The machine was still letting out a steady stream of smoke, and there was a huge fist-shaped dent right in the middle from Kotetsu's punch. It was pretty obvious that it wouldn't be operational again without some serious work.

He closed his eyes, took three deep breaths, and forced the anger back down inside him. There was a time and place for that, but now was not the moment.

He opened his eyes again, let Lucien drop from the wall, and shoved him at Ms Violet and The Mauve Dynamo. "Hold this," he told them.

"Ms Agnes?" he said into the speaker in his helmet.

"Yes?"

"Send over Saito from my team at Apollon Media. Tell him there's work to do." He leaned on the front panel of the machine. "I'm getting Kotetsu back."


	3. Chapter 3

_Earth 2_

 

There were robots in Sternbild. Like, a _lot_ of robots.

Or at least enough robots for it to be noticeable to Kotetsu. After that whole mess in '78 with all the we-will-unperson-you-and-then-replace-your-public-self-with-an-android-who-will-try-to-kill-all-your-friends-and-beloved-daughter-and-very-nearly-kill-you-too stuff, he was incredibly wary about anything to do with robots. So it was jarring for him to see machines with different levels of human appearances at busy crosswalks, in local police boxes, in front of large stores, or on posters advertising robot fighters. Blue Rose didn't seem to pay them any mind as she weaved in and out of traffic.

She didn't speak to him during the ride, although she did make a couple of video calls via her wristband that he couldn't make out. So he had plenty of time to stare out at the city and notice that things seemed ... off.

Stores were gone or in different places. Stuff that he was pretty sure he'd destroyed by accident while saving the day seemed to be mostly intact. Those advertising blimps that kept circling the city night and day were nowhere to be seen. Everything seemed just a little less shiny than it should have been.

There was also a lack of Hero TV stuff. There were posters and signs for it, sure, some of them including a hero in an Ancient Egyptian themed costume he could only assume was this Desert Sandstorm person, but they were about evenly matched with ads for the Robot Fighting League, whatever that was.

It was almost a relief when she pulled up in front of the Hero TV main building and slowed to a halt. "Well, here we are," she said.

"Uh, thanks." Kotetsu looked at her. "Are you coming up too?"

Blue Rose shrugged. "Might as well. I wanna get changed and go home."

They both got off the bike and headed into the lobby together. The guard on duty waved Blue Rose through, before looking oddly at Kotetsu. "He's with me," she said, pulling him along.

They took the elevator up to the sixth floor where the general change rooms and off duty hang out areas were. Kotetsu headed through the door to the guys' side of the change rooms to get out of his suit. He wasn't terribly surprised to see that he didn't have a locker there, since he wasn't First League anymore. He stripped down to his suit liner, and left the pieces of his armour in a corner of the room.

He headed out to the main lounging area, and was surprised to find that the room was full of people. Nathan, Karina, and Pao-Lin sat on the couch, while Keith stood behind, leaning on the wall. An unfamiliar guy with red hair pulled back into a ponytail sat at one of the other chairs next to it.

All of them were staring at him.

"See, I told you it was him," Karina said.

Kotetsu felt uncomfortably on the spot. "Uh, hi?" he said. He pointed at the redhead. "Who are you?"

"Edward. Edward Keddy." When Kotetsu continued to stare blankly at him, Edward continued, "Desert Sandstorm?" He glowed blue, and his hand briefly dissolved in a swirl of sand. "I'm not surprised you don't know me. I kinda got your spot once you retired. I guess I should thank you for the big break."

Kotetsu kind of remembered someone by that name from the time they had gone to inspire the Hero Academy students. "Ooooooh, you're Origami's friend."

Edward looked confused. "Who?"

"Uh, Ivan. Karelin?"

Edward brightened. "Oh, you know Ivan? Cool. Yeah, I'm still trying to get him on my support team."

Kotetsu was trying to puzzle out that statement when Nathan spoke up. "And speaking of retirement, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah, of course, I did," Kotetsu said, "but I came back out of retirement last Christmas, and now Bunny and I are part of the Second League crew."

Nathan and Karina shared a look. "Oh, did you get a pet?" asked Pao-Lin.

"What? No." Kotetsu's head was starting to hurt. A thought hit him. "Where's Antonio?"

"He retired years ago. That's how Pao-Lin got in," Karina said.

"Honey, are you feeling okay?" asked Nathan.

No, not at all. Everything had been different or strange or just plain wrong ever since he'd woken up here, and no one else seemed to notice it at all. There was either something very weird going on with the whole world, or with just him, and he was starting to wonder if maybe it was the latter.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he lied easily. "Just gotta go home and get a good night's rest."

Karina raised an eyebrow. "You're going all the way back to your hometown tonight? 'Cause you haven't been back to Sternbild at all since you just up and quit like a year and a half ago." She crossed her arms. "Seriously, Tiger, what is up with you today?"

Kotetsu hesitated a long moment before answering. "I don't know, but there's something really weird going on here," he finally admitted.

An unfamiliar voice spoke up somewhere behind him. "Is it all right if I interrupt for a minute?"

Kotetsu turned to see a petite woman in a white lab coat at the back of the room. Her pale, white blonde hair was cut into a bob that framed her face, and she wore a friendly-looking expression.

"Should I know you?" Kotetsu said.

She shook her head. "Probably not. I'm Dr Chelsea Wainwright, the staff physician here. I joined after you retired." She pulled a small box-like instrument out of one of the pockets in her coat. "I hope this won't seem too invasive to you, but as nice as it to see you back, we’d like to check to make sure that you are who you say you are. We've had some trouble with imposters trying to break in in the past. If you wouldn't mind taking a quick DNA blood test, just to be on the safe side."

Kotetsu scowled. "You think I'm an imposter?"

Some of the other heroes looked away. Dr Wainwright shook her head. "Not at all. It's just standard safety procedure." She offered him the box. "If you would."

He took it from her. There was a finger shaped indent on one side, and he placed the tip of his index finger there. There was a quick sharp pain as a needle pricked him. He left it there for a couple seconds before pulling his hand back. There was a small red dot of blood on his finger tip from the needle.

Dr Wainwright took the box back from him. She pressed a button on the opposite side of it and a holographic screen popped up in the air above. It cycled through pages faster than he could follow before coming to a stop. _Kaburagi, Kotetsu T._ read the screen, alongside a terrible ID picture of him.

Dr Wainwright nodded and tucked the box back in the pocket of her coat. "Well, that settles that. Welcome back, Mr Kaburagi. I hope you have a nice time in the city. If you need anything from me, my office is on the fourth floor, right outside Lab 2."

There was a general murmur of assent from the other heroes. Karina still didn't look wholly convinced, but Nathan and Pao-Lin looked at least willing to accept him. Edward just looked confused by what the all the deal was about.

Keith came over to put a hand on Kotetsu's shoulder. "Well, if this tool says that this is Mr Tiger, then if must be! It is very nice to see you again, no matter why you're back in the city. Are you staying somewhere tonight?"

"Uh, in the downtime room here, I guess," said Kotetsu. "I hadn't really planed to be here tonight, but." He shrugged.

"Do you need anything?" Keith asked.

Kotetsu looked down at his suit liner. "Do you have something I can change into? I don't really want to sleep in this."

"I think I should have some spare clothes lying around here," said Keith.

"I have an extra set in my locker too, if you want," added Nathan.

It only took a few seconds to weigh the two choices. "Thanks Keith. That'd be great." Keith disappeared into the locker room for a moment and re-emerged with a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. He handed them over to Kotetsu.

Kotetsu checked the clock hanging on the wall. "Well, it's really late, so I should be getting some sleep. Good night! Good night! See you all tomorrow, maybe." He opened a door off to the side of the area, waved at all the people watching at him, and shut it behind him. He sighed in relief at getting away from everyone’s stares.

It was a small room off to the side of the lounge area, with a bed and a tiny side table in it. It was usually used for naps during downtimes in between crimes or during long overnight crises, when you needed some sleep but didn't want to go home. It wasn't his apartment, but it was still better than nothing.

He wriggled out of his suit liner and dressed himself in Keith's spare clothes. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do for now.

Kotetsu sat down on the bed. There was a vidphone on the side table. He contemplated it for a couple minutes, and then reached out and dialled the number of his family home in Oriental Town. Might as well try to say goodnight to Kaede.

It rang three times before being picked up. "Hello, Kaburagi residence," said the distracted person on the other end of the line.

Kotetsu found himself looking at a different version of _himself_. Except this other Kotetsu looked tired, and worn out, and, well, _old_ in a way that he certainly didn't feel yet. 

Kotetsu quickly hit the hang up button without saying anything.

He stared at the phone for a long time. Everybody else had been right. He was the crazy one here.

 

 

_Earth 1_

 

Barnaby handed Tremblay over the police when they arrived. He felt a little satisfaction at increasing his massive point lead over all the other Second League heroes, but it was nothing compared to all the worrying he was doing.

He kept trying to imagine what kind of other universe Kotetsu had ended up in, and how his friend was doing there. What if Kotetsu was stuck in a world full of war or a killer plague? What if the lasers had misfired, and he had materialized stuck in the middle of a wall? What if it was an even better universe than this, where his wife was still alive, and he still had his full powers, and the public adored Wild Tiger, and he didn't want to come back with Barnaby to this world?

He'd reached absolutely ridiculous ideas of what the other universe might be like by the time Saito finally arrived. Although he kept his expression carefully neutral, he felt deeply relieved by their mechanic's appearance.

"Is that it?" Saito asked in his usual barely audible tone. The machine had finally stopped smoking. Barnaby didn't know enough about these kinds of things to tell whether that was a good sign, or if it just meant there was nothing left to burn inside.

"Yes, that's it. The scientist said that it was some kind of portal to another reality."

Saito tapped the huge dent in the main console. "Tiger is very good at breaking things, isn't he?"

Barnaby had to smile a little at that. "Oh, he most certainly is. Can you fix it?"

"Hmmm." Saito carefully pried off the top panel and poked around with the inner workings. "Hmmm," he said again.

"Well?" Barnaby asked.

Saito tapped a finger against his lips. "Yes and no."

Barnaby's heart sank. "What does that mean?"

"Well," said Saito, "I will need the original schematics for this, but I think it should be repairable, if I'm understanding the engineering principles here correctly. I don't have much of a grasp of quantum physics, but I should be able to at least reconstruct someone else's work. But." He looked at Barnaby. "It'd take a couple days to do so, because the damage here is so substantial. And I cannot 100% guarantee success, simply because this is not my design. But I will do my best to bring Tiger back to us."

Barnaby nodded slowly. A qualified yes was at least a better answer than a straight up no. "Can I do anything to help?"

"Oh, certainly. I'd like to move the whole setup back to the Hero TV building to work on it there. Maybe Lab 2; I think that's empty right now. And I just don't have the strength to move it myself." He gestured to his short, flabby arms.

Barnaby frowned. "Is it all right to move this? Won't that disrupt things?"

Saito waved off Barnaby's concern. "As long as I take proper measurements of angles and distances, it should be fine. There's nothing particularly special about this terrible location, and it'll be easier to work on it with my tools around."

Barnaby checked the clock built into his suit. "Give me 7 minutes."

"Oh, there's no particular rush. This isn't going anywhere."

Barnaby let himself relax just a bit and tried to focus on the little bit of hope Saito had given him. This was going to work. It had to.

 

 

_February 19th, NC 1980  
Earth 2_

 

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because the ringing of the vidphone woke Kotetsu. He flailed blindly at it without opening his eyes, and hit the right button on the third try.

" 'lo?" he said groggily.

"Mr Wild Tiger? I'm from the R&D department." The voice on the other end of the line sounded kind of familiar, but he wasn't nearly awake enough yet to identify it. "I'd like to take a look at your suit, if you wouldn't mind. Is this a good time?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. C'mon up."

"Great. I'll be right there." The call disconnected with a click.

Kotetsu forced his eyes open and stared at the glowing digital clock on the phone. It was nearly ten in the morning. He sat up, dragged a hand over his face to shake off the sleep, and blinked until his vision cleared. Keith's clothes had gotten kind of wrinkled while he slept, so he tried to shake out the shirt as best he could.

There was a knock, and the door opened. Kotetsu stared in shock at the person who entered.

The tech was a young man in his mid-twenties. He was dressed fairly casually, with a lab coat thrown on over a pair of jeans and a Sternbild University shirt. His blond hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and he had a pen tucked behind his ear, held in place by the arm of his glasses. He gave Kotetsu a warm smile.

"Hello. My name is Barnaby Brooks Jr, and I'm one of the support staff here. So where did you leave your suit?"


	4. Chapter 4

_Earth 2_

 

Kotetsu sputtered incoherently. "B-Bunny?!"

The blond frowned a bit. "My name's not Bunny, it's Barnaby," he corrected gently.

Kotetsu blinked. In all the time he'd known Bunny, he'd never seen him look anything like this. Even after he'd managed to melt through Bunny's permafrost shell and actual human emotions had started to seep out, Bunny was still a little cold and reserved, and concerned with maintaining his impeccable public image over all of the messed up things going on inside his head. He cared deeply for his partner and truly wanted him to be happy, but man if that kid wasn't prickly even at the best of times.

If he needed any proof that something major had changed, this Barnaby before him was it.

This Barnaby was starting to look concerned at the lack of an answer. "Mr Tiger? Are you all right?"

"Uh, yeah, totally fine." As weird as it was to see his partner like this, he supposed he might as well try to deal with it for the moment. "I, uh, I just left it in the locker room last night. Didn't know where else to put it."

"Well, lead on. I'll follow you." He took a step away from the door to let Kotetsu go by. Kotetsu led him back out into the locker room, and pointed to the stack of pieces piled up in the corner. Barnaby knelt down to look at them.

He picked up the chest piece and looked it over. "I haven't seen this kind of design before. Did you make this?"

"Me? No no no, I just wear the thing. Guy named Saito did."

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. "Yoshio Saito? I thought he was at the university right now." He ran a hand over the front before flipping it over to look at the back.

Barnaby looked up at him. "Why does it say 'Wild Tiger 1-Minute' on the back?"

"Uh, well, that's a... a logo for Minute Rice," Kotetsu said.

Barnaby looked sceptical, but said nothing. He flipped the chest piece back over and pointed to the large Softbank logo on the front. "You do know these are in violation of the show's policy, right? The Justice Department is pretty strict on any dealings mixing professional heroics and money because of that whole scandal blowup 20 years ago. You're lucky these haven't been caught on camera, or you could be facing judicial action."

Kotetsu tilted his head slightly. That was probably most confusing statement he'd heard yet. Commercial sponsorship had always been a big part of Hero TV, even back when he'd watched the show as a kid. Sponsor money and everything that came attached to it was part of the setup. Not a part he particularly cared for, but still, a large part of his job.

"Um, right, yeah. I'll remember that in the future," he said.

Barnaby set the chest piece down and stood back up. "I'd like to take these down to the workshop and run some basic diagnostics on them. I'm curious about the operational design of the suit. If you wouldn't mind," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"It's fine with me," Kotetsu said.

"Great. I'll go get a transport cart and be right back." Barnaby headed for the elevators. Kotetsu popped back into the downtime room to get his suit liner, and threw it on the pile with the rest of the armour.

Barnaby re-emerged from the elevator, cart in tow, a couple minutes later. Kotetsu helped him load up all the pieces of his suit, and followed him down.

The Hero TV workshop was a large room full of all kinds of tech. Bits and pieces of battle armour and communication devices and other practical crime-fighting gadgets were set up around the room. Three or four scientists worked on repairing things that had been broken in the line of duty. Kotetsu has been down here a few times before, usually whenever Saito wanted to dramatically show off something new he'd been working on, but never stayed long. The people here usually didn't appreciate clueless heroes like him getting in the way of their work.

Barnaby wheeled the cart over to what seemed to be his workstation. The desk was extremely tidy, with carefully organized stacks of papers set next to a computer. A university degree hung on the wall behind it, with a empty matching frame also bearing the Sternbild University logo propped up on the desk below.

Barnaby set the pieces up on a stand that seemed designed to hold heroes' armour. He pulled a red notebook out of one of the pockets of his lab coat, and used the pen he'd tucked behind his ear to make notes on the suit design. He worked efficiently and silently, until Kotetsu decided to break the silence.

"Sooo, have you worked here long?" Kotetsu asked.

Barnaby shrugged. "For years, off and on. I just got my Masters degree from SBU in December, so I thought I'd come back here for a bit before starting in on my PhD. It's nice to get practical, hands-on experience to go along with all the theoretical coursework."

Kotetsu whistled. "A Masters? Impressive. Whadja study?"

"Engineering, specifically robotics. My thesis project involved using robotics in medicine, to help develop more life-like prosthetics for amputees."

Kotetsu stared at Barnaby in genuine awe. "Wow. That's amazing, Bu-, Barnaby."

Barnaby shrugged again, slight embarrassment colouring his face. "I just want to use my abilities to help people, that's all."

A thought crossed Kotetsu's mind. "And your powers, too?"

Barnaby looked over at him. "What?"

"Well, you're a NEXT, right? And pretty powerful too, I'd bet."

Barnaby blinked. "How did--" He coughed, and refocused his attention on his work. "Ah. No. I try to stay away from using my NEXT powers much, to be honest."

Kotetsu frowned. There had to be some kind of story behind a statement like that.

"So, Mr Tiger--"

"Kotetsu."

Barnaby looked up. "Pardon?"

"It's okay to use my real name. You can call me Kotetsu. Or Old Man, if you really want, but I'm not nearly as fond of that one."

Barnaby fiddled with the pen in his hands. "I just feel so odd referring to you heroes with your secret identities."

'You heroes'. Wow. He was never going to get over this.

"It's fine. I'm used to it." _From you_ , he wanted to add, but didn't.

"Okay ... Kotetsu." Barnaby tried out the word as if he were tasting it for the first time. "How long have you been using this?"

"Since '77, more or less. It kinda got forced on me at the start of the new season. I used it from then through December '78, took a year off, and just started using it again a couple months ago. It should be in pretty good shape right now. I don't punch as hard as I used to."

Barnaby noted that down, and then set the notebook aside. "Okay, good. I'm going to attach a basic scanner to get an idea of the operational functions inside. Do you know where the data port is?"

Kotetsu just stared at him blankly. "Uh..."

Barnaby shook his head. "I see. I guess I'll have to hunt for it myself."

He wheeled over a work table full of equipment to his workstation, and then started combing over Kotetsu’s power armour. He was rubbing a thumb over the arm piece when he hit a hidden button. The layers shifted and opened, and a talking holographic clock appeared. He chuckled.

"Interesting. Absolutely useless, but certainly very nifty looking."

He pressed the button again to put it away, as an older scientist approached his desk. He leaned against it and stared coldly at Barnaby.

"Junior, I heard you were running tests on the hydrothermal modulators yesterday. I need your notes from that."

Barnaby let out a sigh of deep frustration, an expression Kotetsu was very familiar with. "Dr Rotwang, I have asked you numerous times not to call me that. Would you please use my name."

The name clicked into place for Kotetsu. He hadn't really met the man in the same way all his colleagues had -- and he'd been more than a little distracted by the killer android pummelling him into a wall the one time they'd met in person -- but he knew all about him from Kaede's stories about her kidnapping and brave rescue. As far as he knew, the scientist had ended up a bloody smear at the bottom of Justice Tower sometime during the fight with Maverick.

"Of course. I'll try to remember in the future," Rotwang said.

Barnaby flipped through his notebook until he found what he was looking for, and then ripped the pages out.

"Here," he said, handing the papers over.

Rotwang grabbed the papers out of his hand. "Thank you so much, _Junior_." He emphasized the last word. Barnaby bristled.

"Wild Tiger," Rotwang said coldly, with a curt nod to Kotetsu. He flipped though the notebook pages and wandered back out of the room.

"Who was that?" Kotetsu asked.

"Dr Ernst Rotwang," Barnaby said. He grabbed a scanner with a long cord from off one of the work tables. "He's one of the senior engineers here, since he's been around from nearly the very beginning. He's been holed up in Lab 2 for a while now, working on some secret project. I think it's supposed to be an advanced AI interface system, to get androids to the point where they can think and interact in ways almost indistinguishable from actual people. He's barred anyone from going in there and interrupting his work." He jammed the scanner's plug-in in a port further down the arm piece a little too hard. "And he really doesn't like me for some reason."

If this Rotwang was anything like the one Kotetsu had heard about, he had a pretty good theory of why the doctor might hate Barnaby. But why would such an anti-NEXT bigot be working for Hero TV, a show that had always been very much pro-NEXT? It just didn't make any sense.

Barnaby set the scanner down on the table where Kotetsu could see it. It had a built in monitor screen that kept running through some kind of full system analysis, although most of the terms that popped up were way too technical for him to understand.

Barnaby sat on the edge of his desk, the scanner's cord stretched as far as it would go. He grabbed his notebook again and flipped it open to a blank page.

"This is just a general scanner," he explained. "It's going to run through the basic computer systems to see what you've got in there. It shouldn't cause any problems for you in the long run. Although," he said, tapping the pen against his leg, "so far the general circuitry seems like the strangest mix of really antiquated design work, and stuff I've never seen before."

He'd gotten through nearly two and a half pages of notes when the phone on his desk buzzed. Barnaby reached over to hit the button and answered it on speakerphone, audio only. "Hello?"

"Hey sweetie," said a woman's voice, "are you still working with Wild Tiger's new suit?"

"I am, yes."

"Is he there with you?"

Barnaby looked up from his monitor at Kotetsu. "He is."

"Could you keep him there for a couple minutes? I need to speak with him."

"Sure. We're at my desk in the lab."

"All right, I'll be right over." The call disconnected, and Barnaby went back to looking at his data.

Kotetsu worried a little about the brevity of the conversation. He didn't recognize the voice at all; who’d be asking for him now?

He decided to keep it together, and try to stay calm and focused no matter what they asked.

And he almost lost his composure entirely when a dead woman entered the room.

Dr Emily Brooks was unmistakably Barnaby's mother. They had the same fluffy blonde hair, the same general face shape, the same need for glasses. Her eyes were blue where his were green, but it was obvious which parent he took after. Kotetsu had only ever seen her in old newspaper articles and the family portrait that Bunny kept on the one table in his apartment, so he had a hard time matching up the still images of her to this living, breathing version. She looked the twenty years older, with laugh lines etched into her face and bits of grey threaded through her hair, but still as kind-looking as Bunny always described her as being.

She quietly snuck up behind her son, pressed a finger against her lips, winked at Kotetsu, and reached out to ruffle Barnaby's hair. He let out a gasp of surprise and tried to wave her off. "Mom! Don't do that here!" he said, smoothing down his hair.

"Can't a mother take the opportunity to tease her son?"

He rolled his eyes. "Mom, I'm 26 years old."

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "And you'll always be my precious little boy. It's just so nice to have you working here with us again." She turned her attention to Kotetsu while Barnaby fixed his ponytail and went back to looking at readouts. "Mr Kaburagi. I wanted to talk with you, if you have a minute," she said.

"Yeah, sure, okay."

She motioned for him to sit down in the chair in front of Barnaby's desk, and dragged over another one to sit facing him.

"Chels -- Dr Wainwright -- noticed something odd about your blood sample that I wanted to talk to you about."

Kotetsu threw up his hands. "I'm not an imposter! I swear!"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," she quickly added. "Your DNA sample matched up. You are who you say you are. It’s just that, well, your cells seem to be out of quantum phase alignment with everything else."

Barnaby's head snapped up. "What?" He stared intently at Kotetsu.

Kotetsu just blinked. "I honestly have no idea what you just said," he admitted.

"Let me try to explain," Emily said. She paused before continuing. "Everything in existence is made up of the same basic building blocks if you go down far enough, and so everything more or less resonates the same way. But your cells are somehow ... _off_. From the entire rest of the universe."

Kotetsu's mouth dropped open. "Huh."

"I got a phone call from one Kotetsu T. Kaburagi earlier today, asking about why someone from this building had called his place late last night. So, if there seem to be two Kaburagis, and one of them appears to be out of phase with the world--" She gave Kotetsu a pointed look. "--perhaps one of them is not _from_ this world."

Kotetsu let her words slowly sink in. "Y'know, that sounds crazy, but it still makes more sense than anything else than anything else I've heard lately. I've been so completely confused about everything here for the last day."

Barnaby was still staring at Kotetsu. "Did something happen recently?"

"Bunny and I were on assignment looking into a suspicious warehouse, and the guy there had a machine that must have zapped me with something, because I passed out, and when I woke up, the place was the same but everything else was different."

"Bunny?" Barnaby asked.

"Uh, my partner in fighting crime," Kotetsu said. He didn't go into any more detail about who exactly that was; he figured it would just confuse things more at the moment.

The two Brooks nodded at the story. "That might have caused a dimensional transference," Barnaby said.

"So, can you get me back to the world I'm from then?" Kotetsu asked.

Emily shook her head. "There's no technology I know of that can traverse different universes. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you might be stuck here."


	5. Chapter 5

_February 19th, NC 1980  
Earth 1_

 

It took them until nearly two in the morning to dismantle, load up, and bring all the pieces of the machine back to the lab. They grabbed the boxes of stolen otherworld technology too, mostly because no one could really decide what to do with them. The police didn't know how to classify stolen property from a different universe, and there was no way they could just casually throw out things they didn't even know the purpose of, so the boxes ended up assigned to Hero TV by default. Saito stayed to move things into the empty lab for a bit, before going home to sleep somewhere around three.

Barnaby didn't. He changed into his street clothes once they got back, and worked with Saito until the tech left. He spent the rest of the night going through computer files the city had collected about the case. Tremblay didn't seem to have much of a record, aside from the employer theft the previous fall. He did find some of Tremblay's published physics papers on Many-Worlds Theory online, but they were far too technical and overwritten in academic jargon for him to really grasp what exactly they were trying to say.

He did, however, manage to find Tremblay's schematics for the dimensional portal buried in among the files the University sent over, so when Saito came back just after 10:00 am, they were ready to go.

Barnaby couldn't do a whole lot more to help than act as a gofer. He fetched tools and food for the two of them, and helped out with his NEXT powers whenever it was called for, but Saito did the brunt of the work, ripping out burnt pieces out of the console and carefully replacing them with new ones.

He started getting a headache mid-afternoon, and it just got worse as the day went on. Barnaby started in on the coffee, which helped with the exhaustion that came with being up for nearly two days straight, but only made the migraine worse.

He must have looked as tired as he felt, because Agnes did a double take at Barnaby when she showed up to check on their progress around 5:30 pm.

"You look terrible. How long have you been here?"

"We started working on this around ten this morning," Barnaby answered.

Agnes gave him a look. "That's not what I meant. Have you slept at all since Tiger vanished yesterday?" When he didn't answer, she continued, "You haven't, have you?" She crossed her arms at him. "Look, we're all worried about that stupid destructive lunkhead. But you can't keep doing this. You're of no use to anyone if you're too tired to function."

"I'm fine," he protested. "I just need more stimulants. We'll make more progress if I keep working on this."

She sighed deeply. "I like you. Your surprise Christmas return from retirement brought in the biggest rating spike of the year. But if you don't go home and get some sleep, so help me I will find a doctor willing to break the Hippocratic Oath, and shoot you full of sleeping pills myself." She softened a little. "I will make sure that someone contacts you if we make any breakthroughs during the night. I promise."

Barnaby wanted to argue with her, but the throbbing pain inside his head was making it hard to come up with a decent comeback. He sighed. "Fine."

"Good," Agnes said.

Saito timidly raised a hand. "If I could interrupt..."

The other two focused all their attention on him. "Is it fixed?" Barnaby asked.

"Mmmm, no, not really. I can't try opening the portal to send things through yet. But!" He grinned. "I _can_ break through the barrier between worlds just enough to get the scanners working."

"Which means what?" Agnes asked.

Saito rubbed his hands together. "Which means I've been able to find the tracking device in Tiger's suit."

Barnaby's pulse jumped. "So where is he?"

"Here."

Both Barnaby and Agnes stared blankly at him.

"The tracking device in Tiger's suit says that it's at nearly the same GPS coordinates as we are. So, assuming the other universe is anything like this one, he seems to be in the Hero TV building."

Barnaby let out a mental sigh of relief. He decided to take that as good news. At least he could be somewhat sure that Kotetsu wasn't stuck out in the middle of nowhere and had probably found help.

Agnes nodded a couple times. "Update me if there's more any news. And you," she said, turning to point at Barnaby, "go home. I don't want to see you back here again tonight."

"Yes ma'am," he said.

Agnes headed out to the production control room, and Saito went back to tinkering with things. Barnaby massaged his temples in a futile attempt to make the headache go away, and pulled out his phone to call for a taxi.

He stopped, mulled things over, quietly grabbed one of the boxes of stolen tech, and headed for the exit himself.

 

 

_Earth 2_

They finally finished running tests on things around 6:00 that evening. The other scientists in the lab had left a while ago, leaving them alone. Kotetsu had gotten more involved with the tests after Emily's visit, mostly as a way to avoid thinking about the idea that he might really be stuck in this version of reality forever.

The diagnostic tool let out a beep as it reached the end of the last test. Barnaby unplugged the most recent scanner and set it aside, before briefly taking off his glasses and tiredly rubbing his eyes.

He popped his glasses back on, set his red notebook down on the edge of the desk, and gave Kotetsu a faint smile. "I think I'm done for the day. Thank you for letting me take a look at this. It's been very interesting."

"Sorry I couldn't be more help."

"It's fine. I don't really expect front-line heroes to know all the nitty gritty about the technical aspects of the things they use."

Barnaby shrugged off his lab coat, and hung it on a hook on the wall. He opened one of the larger drawers in his desk and pulled out a red leather jacket that he threw on on top of his t-shirt. He looked over at Kotetsu. "Do you have a place to stay tonight?"

"I'll probably just use the downtime room again. I'm told I don't have an apartment here in the city anymore," Kotetsu said.

Barnaby's brow creased like he was thinking hard about something. He took a minute before saying, "Would you... Would you like to stay with us?"

Kotetsu blinked. "Say what?"

"Would you like to stay with my family tonight," Barnaby continued hesitatingly. "We have a number of guest rooms, so it wouldn't be a problem, and I'm sure my parents would love the chance to ask you more about where you're from. It would certainly be more comfortable than staying here another night." He paused. "Unless you enjoy staying here."

"Uh, no, that'd be great, thanks. This place isn't really meant for long term stays." He stood up and stretched. "So are we off to your apartment?"

Barnaby gave him a funny look. "No, my family's manor."

Kotetsu froze. _Manor_? Where'd they... Wait. He kind of recalled seeing the torched remains of a house in some of the newspaper photos Bunny had shown him of his parents' murder, but he hadn't really thought it was that big. He supposed he'd find out.

"Your family's manor it is," he said. He gestured down to his borrowed t-shirt. "You don't happen to have a spare jacket, do you? Or maybe some boots? I'm not really dressed right for winter here."

Barnaby considered it. "I think Dr Patel keeps some spares around here. He's not in this week, but I don't think he'd mind you borrowing them. He's pretty generous with his stuff." He walked over to poke through a large brown box next to a desk across the room, and pulled out a blue pea coat and a pair of rubber rain boots. He offered them to Kotetsu. "I'm not sure if they'll fit, but that's all I can think of. Try them on. I need to call my parents and let them know I'm bringing a guest tonight."

He tried them on while Barnaby pulled out his phone and made a call. A little snug maybe, but better than nothing. He was doing up the buttons when Barnaby flipped the phone shut.

"It should be fine," he said. "They've also offered us dinner if we get there in time."

"Well, let's get going then," Kotetsu said. "Don't wanna make them wait."

Barnaby repocketed his phone and grabbed the notebook, and they both headed out to the attached parking garage. Barnaby led Kotetsu over to a sporty-looking red car, clicked the unlock button, and motioned for Kotetsu to get in. Kotetsu grabbed the stack of papers and books on the front seat and carefully moved them to the back before sitting down.

"Sorry," Barnaby said, getting in the other side. "I don't usually have company on my drives." He stuck a key in the ignition, and the car engine turned on with a purr.

He navigated them out of the parking garage and through the heart of downtown Sternbild towards the more residential areas. They tried making small talk, but Kotetsu really didn't know what to say to this version of Bunny, and Barnaby seemed unwilling to press deeper than basic topics. They ended up spending most of the drive without talking, with only the sounds of the radio filling the space between.

A loud, over-excited ad for the Robot Fighting League came on. Barnaby immediately hit the power button to turn the radio off. "It's always them," he grumbled.

"So what exactly is the Robot Fighting League?" Kotetsu asked. "I've never heard of them before."

Barnaby turned his head slightly to look at him. "Really? They've gotten huge here. It's robot cage fighting. Two battle androids enter the ring and go at it until one of them gets utterly destroyed. It's brutal, over-commercialized, blatantly pandering to the lowest common denominator--" He frowned. "--and we've been hemorrhaging viewers to them for years. People just don't find street crime arrests interesting any more. We keep getting complaints that Hero TV isn't nearly as exciting as it could be."

Kotetsu thought about some of the things Maverick had admitted to the others while he'd been passed out on the floor. "You're not going to try and ... _make_ things more interesting to attract more viewers, are you?"

Barnaby looked insulted. "Absolutely not. Ever since my parents took over the controlling interest in the show after that whole mess 20 years ago, they've been serious about enforcing personal integrity for everyone involved with Hero TV. If that means we slip a bit in the ratings, so be it." He drummed his fingers against the wheel. "The one thing I don't get about the RFL, though, is how they always seem to get our tech. I, or my parents, or the other team members come up with something new in robotics, and it's almost guaranteed that their robot battlers will be using it before the end of the month, long before the public patents come out. I don't know where they're getting it from, but they're certainly not paying us for it."

He shoulder checked to switch lanes before continuing. "And we could use the money, since the Justice Department has been talking about cutting our budget again lately. We can barely afford five heroes these days; I don't know who they'd have to cut to bring it down to four. Fire Emblem, maybe. He has been around the longest."

He pulled off the main road into a residential community full of old houses. Kotetsu watched as the homes slowly got bigger the further in they went. The car finally pulled to a gentle stop. "We're here," Barnaby said.

Kotetsu peered out the car window, and his mouth dropped open. He'd always kind of been aware that Bunny came from a wealthy family, what with the expensive designer clothes and the apartment in an upscale district of the Gold Stage. Bunny hadn't exactly been hurting for cash either during the year he'd taken off to get his head in order. But it generally wasn't something he brought up on his own, and he usually brushed it off as nothing if talk show interviewers did.

But to actually _see_ the huge, imposing Brooks family house intact, and not a pile of smouldering wreckage in an old newspaper photo, was a different thing entirely. It was three stories, with an imposing stone front, and trees and hedges lining the front of the property. Tall glass windows hinted at how many rooms were hidden inside. Bronze roses formed decorative layers marking each floor on the outside of the building.

In a city as densely populated as Sternbild, it must have been worth an absolute fortune.

Kotetsu kept trying to match the image of this fancy place to Bunny's underfurnished apartment, and failing horribly.

He turned away from the house to see Barnaby watching him. The blond looked a bit uncomfortable.

"I know it seems a bit ostentatious, but it's been in the family a long time."

"It's ... a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I'm curious about what the inside looks like now."

"It's a little old fashioned," Barnaby said, getting out of the car and locking it behind him. "But I suppose it's home."

"Do you live here?" Kotetsu asked.

"I have an apartment of my own, closer to the university, but I still use my room here sometimes. My parents like it when I visit."

They walked up the tall front steps together. Barnaby pushed open the heavy front doors, and led Kotetsu into the front hall. The inside was covered in dark wood panelling, lit with soft lamplight from the overhead light fixture. A hand carved table with a vase of flowers stood in the front hall next to a shoe rack. Barnaby kicked off his shoes there, and Kotetsu did the same with the wet boots.

Barnaby led Kotetsu into the house. "We're here!" he called out.

A man and a woman appeared out of a side doorway. Kotetsu had already seen Emily Brooks, so he managed to keep his composure a little bit better with Dr Barnaby Brooks Sr. Barnaby's Dad also had the weight of 20 years added to him. His hairline had receded quite a bit and he'd gone grey at the temples, but his vivid green eyes still held a spark of warmth. He offered a hand to Kotetsu.

"So you must be the visitor from a different world. Emily's filled me in a little bit about you, but it's nice to meet you in person, Mr Kaburagi. How are you enjoying your unexpected sojourn into our reality?"

"It's ... kind of weird, actually," he admitted. "Thank you for letting me stay here tonight. I really appreciate the offer."

Barnaby Sr waved it off. "It's nothing. The Wild Tiger from this world was a good, hardworking hero for our show. Any counterpart of his is more than welcome here."

"Uh, thanks. I think," said Kotetsu.

"So come eat, both of you," Emily said. "We're having fish tonight."

"Sounds great. Did you make it?" Kotetsu asked.

Emily laughed. "Oh, no. I'm afraid none of us can actually cook. You're lucky that we have a housekeeper for that, or it'd be cans of soup and instant noodles all the time."

The dining room had a large picture window that overlooked the grassy yard behind the house. Potted plants sat on the serving side table, adding some colour to the warm wooden panelling of the other walls. The antique oak table in the middle of the room had been set for four, and Kotetsu waited until all three Brooks had chosen a seat before sitting down at the last remaining spot.

A little old lady with white hair bustled out of a side door that presumably led to the kitchen, arms laden with platters of food.

Kotetsu had grabbed a serving spoon and helped himself to fish and veggies before his hosts started in on their questions. "So, Mr Kaburagi, what's your version of reality like?" asked Barnaby Sr.

"Uh, pretty similar actually, although not as many robots as you seem to here. And from what I've heard, Hero TV's a lot bigger over there. I did retire for a bit, like I've heard the other me has, but I'm back at it now, although I'm just Second League these days."

All three of them looked a little puzzled at the Second League reference. Kotetsu guessed that with the budget issues Barnaby had mentioned, they probably didn't have that here.

"So why did you retire?" Emily asked. "The Wild Tiger here offered his resignation pretty suddenly in November '78, but never told us why."

Kotetsu bit his lip. With that kind of date, he could probably offer a guess as to why. But as honest as he'd tried to be with people in his world about his power loss ever since it nearly got him killed, he wasn't sure whether the Kotetsu here would appreciate that little fact getting out.

"I promised my daughter I'd spend more time with her," he said. That was half the truth, at least. "She lives in my hometown. She's turning 12 next weekend. She'd just developed NEXT powers back in '78 and I wanted to be a bigger part of her life to help her deal with that, not just a picture on the other end of a vidphone."

Both Emily and Barnaby Sr smiled at that. "As a parent, that's something I can understand," she said. "Although I do wish my own son would be a little more open about using his NEXT powers."

"Mom, we've talked about this before," Barnaby said, voice tinged with annoyance.

"And I still think you should embrace your abilities. You have a real gift; you could use it in a lot of amazing ways."

"Can we just drop this?" Barnaby asked.

"So, Mr Kaburagi, are Emily and I still working for Hero TV over there?" Barnaby Sr piped up.

Now that question, Kotetsu decided, was not something to answer truthfully at all. The Brooks seemed like nice people. He didn't want to ruin their dinner by telling them what a horrible, bloody end they'd come to.

"You'd ... moved on from Hero TV by the time I got there," he said, massaging the truth as much as he possibly could.

"Too bad," said Barnaby Sr. "I'd love to know what we're like over there."

 _Me too_ , thought Kotetsu.

"So you two looked busy at work when I dropped in on you today," said Emily. "What were you up to?"

Barnaby perked up. "Mr T-, Kotetsu let me do a full analysis on the battle armour he brought with him. There's actually a really interesting use of microcircuitry inside it." He launched into a full-blown technical description chock full of engineering terms that meant nothing to Kotetsu but clearly impressed Emily and Barnaby Sr. Kotetsu nodded at appropriate breaks in the conversation, but focused more on this food than joining in.

Despite how loving and open the Brooks family seemed, he couldn't help but feel a little sad, no matter how well he tried to hide it. This was indeed a different universe, and it was kind of hard to grapple with the fact that the Barnaby here really didn't know him -- this universe's Kotetsu, he'd wager -- at all. And yet, his friend seemed happier here. Loving parents, educational accomplishments, a rewarding job, a distinct lack of personal tragedy and mental trauma. Was this how Bunny might have turned out, without being orphaned, being mind raped for twenty years, being isolated, being unwittingly shaped and trained and directed as someone else's pawn?

Would the universe he knew have been a better place if Bunny had never been forcibly pushed into becoming a superhero?

He loved having Bunny as a partner, and he would be quick to admit just how good Bunny was at what he did, but the idea that he might be yet another part of Bunny's long history of problems was troubling to him.

When dinner was over, he excused himself, needing to get a break from the family atmosphere to get the darker thoughts out of his head. Emily and Barnaby Sr waved him off as they helped to clean up the meal. Barnaby watched him go, but didn't immediately follow.

He wandered out of the dining room and down the main hall. Most of the doors leading off it were closed, so he ended up in a large family room near the end. An imposing brick fireplace took up one wall, with a couple of couches set up in front of it, and a large wooden side table at the other end of the room. Paintings had been hung here and there, around the tall windows.

There was an old portrait of someone hung next to the fireplace, with an "In Loving Memory" plaque set just underneath. There was something familiar about the woman in the photo. Kotetsu stared at the picture until it clicked.

She may have been much younger and not yet grey-haired or time-worn, but he was reasonably sure it was Samantha Taylor.

Barnaby poked his head around the door frame and wandered in towards Kotetsu. "There you are. One of the guest rooms on the second floor is being prepared for you, so you can head up there whenever you're ready for bed."

Kotetsu pointed up at the photo. "That's Ms Samantha Taylor, right?"

Barnaby smiled sadly. "Yeah, that's my Aunt Samantha. She died a long time ago." He dropped his gaze. "And I killed her."

"I don't believe that," Kotetsu said flatly. He knew how much Bunny had cared for Samantha, and how violently upset he'd been at her murder. Bunny'd always described her as being pretty much family to him. Even if this was a different world, he couldn't see any version of Barnaby harming her in any way.

"No, it's true," Barnaby said. He sighed. "It's a long story."

Kotetsu shrugged. "I have time."

Barnaby sank down onto a couch. Kotetsu sat down on the one opposite, watching him. Barnaby took a deep breath, and stared up at the photo of Samantha.

"It was Christmas Eve, I was four years old, and it was the worst day of my life."


	6. Chapter 6

_December 24th, NC 1957  
Earth 2_

 

It was Christmas Eve, and the world was beautiful.

Barnaby's parents had wrapped him up in a warm coat and scarf, and shooed him out of the house.

"You have a nice time with Aunt Samantha this afternoon. Your Daddy and I have grownup stuff to do today," his Mom had said. She'd planted a kiss on the top of his head.

"What kind of grownup stuff?" Barnaby had asked.

His Dad had bopped him on the head with a roll of brightly coloured wrapping paper. "Secret stuff. You'll find out later."

They'd both knelt down to hug Barnaby before walking him to the taxi waiting outside the house, and waving him off.

Aunt Samantha had taken him to the big plaza downtown, and Barnaby was convinced it was the most beautiful place in the world. There was the tallest Christmas tree Barnaby had ever seen, all decorated with lights and baubles, and a shiny digital countdown clock hung on it showing the date. There was a huge skating rink full of people having fun. There were all kinds of tents set up around the rink selling Christmas goods as souvenirs.

His throat really kind of hurt and he was feeling hotter than usual, but nothing was going to stop him from enjoying everything there was here.

"Can we go skating?" he asked Aunt Samantha.

She laughed. "Oh, I'm no good at skating. But I'll cheer you on from the side if you want to go out there."

She bought him a pair of rental skates and helped him lace them up tightly. He stepped out onto the ice and glided across the smooth surface. It felt almost like flying, to just push your way across the ice like there was nothing beneath you.

He waved energetically at Aunt Samantha, and she waved back at him. She took pictures of him out on the ice, and he made faces at her whenever he noticed.

He skated until his head started feeling kind of woozy, and then headed back over to the rink exit. Aunt Samantha was there waiting for him. She helped him get his skates off. His feet felt all weird and tingly to be back in regular shoes.

"I got you something while you were busy skating," Aunt Samantha said.

"What is it?" Barnaby asked. "Lemme see!"

Aunt Samantha reached into her handbag and pulled out a red Santa hat. She dropped it on top of Barnaby's blond curls. It was just a bit too big for him, and slipped down over his eyes. He pushed it back up until he could see again, and broke out in a huge grin.

"This is great! Thank you so much, Aunt Samantha!"

She patted him on the head. "You looked like you needed a hat to go with your outfit." She pulled out her camera again. "Smile!"

Barnaby grinned as widely as he could for the photo. Aunt Samantha hit the button, and the flash left spots in his vision.

"There. Now your parents can see how cute you look right now."

Barnaby grabbed her hand and pointed at the huge tree. "Can we get our picture with that and my new hat? Please?"

"Well, I don't see why not," she said. She let Barnaby drag her over to the tree. He bounced eagerly on his toes until it was their turn, and then bounded up on to the platform. He wrapped his hand around Aunt Samantha's fingers and they smiled for the camera.

They were waiting for their picture to be printed when he sneezed. His nose was starting to run, and he wiped it off on his sleeve. He sneezed again, and Aunt Samantha looked down at him with concern.

"That's a lot of sneezing you're doing there. Are you feeling okay?" She put a hand against Barnaby’s forehead. "You're burning up! I think you might be coming down with something. We should get you home early and put you in bed for a bit."

"No," he said. "I wanna stay here longer."

She gave him a sympathetic smile. "You don't want to be sick when you open your presents from Santa Claus tomorrow, do you?" she asked.

Barnaby kicked at the mushy snow on the ground. "No."

Aunt Samantha reached for his hand. "C'mon. I'll make you some really good chicken noodle soup to help you feel better. With animal crackers in it, just how you like it."

He nodded. That sounded really good. "Okay."

They got home just before sunset. There was an extra pair of shoes by the front door when they got in that Barnaby didn't recognize at all.

Aunt Samantha frowned. "I didn't know we were having guests today."

Barnaby could hear the muffled sounds of an argument from down the hall. He kicked off his wet shoes and went to see what was happening. Aunt Samantha followed right behind him.

The door to the living had been left open a bit. There was a man sitting there near the Christmas tree. Barnaby recognized him as Mr Maverick, one of the people his parents worked with. His parents were on the other couches in front of the roaring fireplace, talking to Mr Maverick. All three of them looked mad.

"Albert, you must know we can't possibly support this," his Mom said. "We are not arming domestic terrorists with our inventions!"

"And then we will crash and burn in the ratings. People want excitement; they want drama. They will watch the show, and invest in the show, if we give them something more thrilling and cinematic. Heroes are made and defined by the strength of the villains they triumph over."

"And you want us to _create_ crime and terrorize the average citizens of Sternbild just to make it look better on TV?" His Dad slammed a fist down on the couch. "We didn't start doing this for money or fame. We wanted target the public prejudice against NEXTs, to show people that they're just as human as anyone else, and that you shouldn't fear them, just because they have extra abilities. We shouldn't attack civilians to show them that their bigotry is wrong."

Mr Maverick seethed. Barnaby's parents shared a look with each other.

"Albert, we're going to tell the police what you've been up to," his Mom said. "You can't keep doing this. It's both completely immoral, and huge breach of the public trust in us."

Barnaby's Dad reached for the phone on the table. Mr Maverick stood up, and walked over to stand near the Christmas tree. He shook his head.

"I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. That you'd see my point and understand why we need to do this. But I thought you might still disagree with me."

Mr Maverick reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at Barnaby's Dad. "It's been a pleasure working with you both." He cocked back the safety.

Barnaby's powers flared on unconsciously. With a yell, he threw the door open and charged at Mr Maverick, and slammed the man back-first against the thick stone wall.

Mr Maverick's fists automatically clenched with the force of the blow.

The gun went off.

There was a sick squishing noise right behind Barnaby as the bullet pierced human flesh. He turned to see Aunt Samantha collapse to the ground, blood soaking straight through her shirt and pooling onto the floor. She coughed, and hacked up more blood.

Barnaby screamed.

It was his fault. It was all his fault. He'd seen the gun. He'd used his powers to attack Mr Maverick, and Aunt Samantha had been shot because of it.

He wanted to turn the blue glow off, to just make it go away. But it wouldn't, not until he'd run through the full five minutes. So he just stood there in the middle of the living room, screaming, hands shaking, watching helplessly as more blood than he'd ever seen before pulsed out of his housekeeper.

His Dad leapt over the arm of the couch. He kicked the gun away, grabbed the dazed Mr Maverick, and pinned him to the floor. "Emily! Call the police!" he yelled. "And an ambulance!"

His Mom punched numbers into the phone as fast as she could, and his Dad focused all his attention back on Barnaby. "Barnaby? Hey. Kiddo. It's okay. It's going to be okay."

Barnaby stopped screaming, but he kept shaking. "It's my fault. I did this. I hurt Aunt Samantha," he said.

"No." His Dad's voice was strong and certain. "No you didn't. It's an accident. We're going to try and help."

"They're on their way," his Mom called. "Do you need help?"

"No, I've got Albert pinned pretty well. Help Samantha and Barnaby."

His Mom sprinted over to his side of the room. She ripped off one of the sleeves of her blouse and pushed it against Aunt Samantha's wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. It didn't help much, as blood started to soak straight through the thin fabric.   
She motioned to Barnaby with her free hand. "Barnaby? Sweetie? Come here. Come over here."

Barnaby took a couple shaky steps forward, but didn't touch her. He was still glowing. He didn't want to hurt his Mom the same way he'd accidentally hurt Aunt Samantha.

His Mom wrapped an arm around Barnaby, and pulled him close to her chest in a tight embrace. She let her chin rest on his head. "Oh, sweetie. It's okay. It's okay."

Barnaby started sobbing. His little chest shook as heavy tears splashed against his Mom's shoulder. "Is she going to die?" he asked through the crying.

"I don't know," she said.

Barnaby felt a touch on his hand. He looked down to see Aunt Samantha reaching up for him. He grabbed her hand and cupped it carefully in both of his. She gave him a weak squeeze, and rubbed a thumb over his fingers.

There were sirens outside. Barnaby's glow faded away right before police and paramedics burst into the room. Aunt Samantha's hand fell away as she was strapped to a stretcher and rushed out of the house. Barnaby's Mom picked him up and carried him out front. He kept on crying as the police marched a handcuffed Mr Maverick to a patrol car.

His Dad joined them, and wrapped Barnaby and his Mom up in a tight hug. The three of them stayed like that for a long while, just hugging and crying, until a police officer asked them to go with her to the station and fill out a report about the incident, and a doctor called them from the hospital.

They spent New Year's Eve holding a sad little funeral for Samantha Taylor.


	7. Chapter 7

_February 19th, NC 1980  
Earth 2_

 

Kotetsu stared dumbfoundedly at Barnaby as he told his story. Geez, was Bunny not allowed to have a happy childhood in any universe? He felt awful for Ms Samantha. No one deserved to die like that, even by accident. That poor lady.

Barnaby didn't seem to notice Kotetsu's expression, as he carried on talking. "Maverick went to trial about a month later. He was sentenced to life in prison for manslaughter, attempted murder, conspiracy with and arming of some terrorist group, Ouro-something--"

"Ouroboros," Kotetsu supplied.

"Yeah, that's the one," Barnaby said. "The media found out about what he'd been doing and it turned into a whole big scandal. Reporters were following my parents and me around for months. Ratings for the show shot up, because people wanted to see what all the fuss was about, but the Justice Department moved to take it over, so they could make sure we were fighting actual crime and not crime we'd created. Things have worked out okay since then, although there's a lot of fairly strict rules surrounding some of what we do to make sure that everything stays legit."

"And you?" Kotetsu asked. "It's gotta be hard to live through something like that so young."

Barnaby gave a half-hearted shrug. "It was pretty traumatizing when I was younger, and my parents took me to counselling for a few years to help me deal with it. Nowadays I'm okay, although I still don't like using my NEXT powers. It dredges up too many bad memories. But you can't spend your whole life fixating on a single event you couldn't control."

Well _that_ was a very different view right there.

Barnaby stopped before continuing. "Which does beg one particular question." He eyed Kotetsu. "How _do_ you know I'm a NEXT? That's not something I generally tell people about."

Uh-oh. Kotetsu hadn't realized that was something he wasn't supposed to know. He felt it hard to come up with an excuse under the weight of Barnaby's stare. "Uh, well, in my world it's ... it's kind of public knowledge."

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. "Why would that be public knowledge?"

There wasn't really any way to beat around the bush on this one. Kotetsu rubbed at the back of his neck. "'Cause ... 'cause you're a professional hero."

Barnaby just stared at him. "What. Me? No."

"No, it's true," Kotetsu said. "And I gotta admit, you're really good at it. I mean, if I'm being honest, you're probably even better than me with the same power set. You made King of Heroes in your rookie year."

Barnaby stared some more before letting out a sound of disbelief. "Wouldn't my Mom love to hear that. I wonder what kind of code name and costume design I ended up with."

He stopped. "Wait." Barnaby put a hand to his chin. Kotetsu could just imagine the gears turning inside the blond's head. "You told me that your partner was someone named 'Bunny'. And the first time we met, you called me that." Barnaby's eyes slowly widened. He looked up at Kotetsu. "Does that mean...?"

"Yeah," Kotetsu said quietly.

Barnaby looked absolutely appalled. "I picked _Bunny_ as a professional code name?!"

Kotetsu smiled sheepishly at that. "Um, well, no. I kinda stuck that one on you."

Barnaby narrowed his eyes. "And why would you do that?"

"'Cause we ... _really_ didn't get along at first, and your suit has these bunny-ear-things on it." He gestured with his hands, sticking them up like a pair of rabbit ears. "At first it was because I hated you, but now it's more of a friendly thing. The other you's pretty much okay with it these days."

Barnaby nodded slowly. "So, ignoring the terrible nickname, what code name _do_ I use to fight crime?"

"Well... You don't."

Barnaby blinked. "What."

"You didn't want to use a code name, so you just go by your real name."

"What."

"Yeah, you have a public identity, and pretty much everyone in Sternbild knows who you are. You still have a lotta fans who send you letters."

Barnaby sat there in silence, just taking it in. He finally shook his head.

"I don't know whether you're teasing me or not. This all seems a bit too much to believe." He stood and stretched. "Anyway, I can show you where the guest room is."

A thought hit Kotetsu. "Hey, wait. Where is Maverick these days? Is he still alive?"

"As far as I know, he's still in jail," Barnaby said. "I know my parents keep an eye on his stat sheets. I can show you some of his more recent footage."

There was computer terminal over on the side table. Barnaby booted it up, and a holographic screen materialized over the keyboard.

He logged in to the city's judicial database, searched Maverick's name, and sorted through all of the video files that came up. "Here. This is Maverick's parole hearing from '77. He didn't get it."

A black and white security camera video opened up. It showed an empty table with a metal folding chair set behind it, and the back of the heads of the three people facing it across the room. A pair of guards led a prisoner into the room, and he sat down in the chair. The prisoner was an older man, with white hair, and a thin, gaunt face. His glasses sat on the end of a pointy nose, and he looked tired and broken.

"Good afternoon," said one of the faceless judges. "Are you Albert Maverick?"

"Yes, I am," said the prisoner.

"I'm Commissioner Smythe," continued the judge. "My colleagues here are Commissioner Ludlow and Commissioner Reyes. Now, I believe this is reappearance here for you. You've been before this Parole Board before. It looks like you continue to serve a life sentence with a fifteen-year minimum. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir, it is," said the prisoner.

"Pause it," Kotetsu said suddenly.

Barnaby hit the pause button. The footage froze. Kotetsu frowned and leaned in closer to get a better look at the screen.

"What is it?" Barnaby asked.

Kotetsu pointed to the prisoner in the chair. "That's not Albert Maverick."

 

 

_Earth 1_

 

Barnaby's head was killing him by the time he got home. He set the box down on his chair, and let his leather jacket drop carelessly to the floor.

He turned on the TV for some background noise. They were showing a rerun episode of Hero TV from the week before. Some power-draining NEXT in a garish homemade green and yellow costume who'd dubbed himself "Electrolyte" had holed up in a major power plant, and had threatened to drive the city into a winter blackout unless he got to date a supermodel for Valentine's Day. It was exciting and very well edited, but Barnaby'd felt a real disconnect from the whole media circus ever since he'd quit superheroing after the mess at Justice Tower.

It'd been an emotionally rough break year, but a well-needed one. His memory was still fuzzy in places and he still couldn't be entirely sure what exactly was real and what had been painted in by Maverick, but it'd been good to get some time alone for a bit to try and sort things out. He'd spent a lot of nights trying to think about what he wanted to do with his life now that he had full control over it, but he'd been so focused on being a professional hero for so long, he honestly had no idea what else he'd even want to try doing. His friendship with Kotetsu was about the only thing he was certain he wanted to keep.

He couldn't really focus on the action onscreen, and the announcer's dramatic yelling was only making his head hurt more.

Maybe Agnes was right. Maybe he should get some sleep.

He turned off the TV, picked up the box again, and carried it into the other room. He sat down on the edge of his bed, and opened the box up for the first time.

Inside was a smooth piece of metal, packed tightly between wadded up pieces of old newspapers put there to fill in space. He picked the metal thing up and examined it, flipping it over twice. It was hard to guess at what it might be. It looked kind of like a smaller, streamlined laser blaster, but there were wires hanging off the wider end, like it was meant to be attached to something. Battle armour? An android? Something entirely different?

He let it fall onto the bed. That wasn't going to help him.

He started picking through the bits of newspaper thrown into the box, out of curiosity. Most of them looked to be from November of the previous year. It was kind of interesting, getting snippets of news from some other universe. News events were just a bit off from how they'd happened here. Different shows were listed in the TV guides. There were lots of overly glossy ads for something called the "Robot Fighting League" that appeared to be exactly what it said it was.

He uncrumpled another piece of newspaper, and then froze.

He was looking at himself.

No, that wasn't quite right. This other version of him was wearing much more casual clothing than Barnaby would ever choose to wear in public. His hair was pulled back in a large clip. He was smiling with a much more genuine expression than Barnaby was still comfortable with showing.

It was the strangest feeling, like looking at a mirror reflection that wasn't quite right.

He was so caught up with the picture that he almost didn't notice the article next to it. The bit with the headline had been ripped off, but most of the article's text was still there. He scanned the paragraphs.

_Twelve-year-old Fatima Malik is enjoying her very first soccer game outside St Isidore of Seville Hospital. For most kids, this would be a typical day of fun, but Fatima's different: she hasn't been able to walk since her legs were crushed in a car accident six years ago._

_Fatima's play day is all thanks to grad student Barnaby Brooks Jr. The only child of robotics tycoons Barnaby and Emily Brooks, Barnaby the younger is currently finishing up his Master's Degree at Sternbild University, and hopes to make his own name in the field soon._

_"I've spent so much of my life seeing how robotics can help fight crime, I wanted to try helping victims of crime too," he says. And his ambitious thesis project is certainly a good step in that direction. Thanks to his experimental robotic prosthetic, Fatima is keeping up with all the other kids in the game._

The article went on to list off some more specs about the project, quotes from a couple other patients at the hospital, and praise from the head of the science department at SBU.

Barnaby sat there staring at the paper for a long time.


	8. Chapter 8

_Earth 2_

 

Barnaby stared at Kotetsu. "What do you mean?"

Kotetsu kept pointing to the man on screen. "See, I know what Maverick should more or less have looked like in '77, and that's not him. The facial features are all wrong. He's missing that big ugly mole on his brow."

Barnaby leaned in to look more closely at the image. "So then, where is he? And who's that? And why has no one noticed that something's wrong before?"

Kotetsu shook his head. "I've no idea. But I suspect that his NEXT powers are somehow involved in this."

"What NEXT powers?" Barnaby asked.

"Didn't you know? Maverick's a NEXT. He can mess with people's memories, change things around without them knowing. He framed me for murder and made everyone at Hero TV forget about my secret identity so they'd hunt me down for him." He looked at Barnaby. "And he's done worse."

Barnaby frowned deeply. "No, that's not listed on his record. I know you don't have to register any NEXT abilities with the municipal government, but the justice system always records it for prisoners as part of standard policing procedure. Unless something's wrong in the system..." He lapsed into silence, and his face took on a distracted look.

It was a minute or two before he spoke again. "Do you think you can find your own way up to the guest room? It's the second floor, third door on the left. I'm sorry, but I have something I need to do."

"Sure, that shouldn't be a problem," Kotetsu said. "Good night."

"Good night," Barnaby said distractedly, still staring at the screen.

It was easy enough to find the curved wooden staircase that went upstairs. There were several doors leading off the second floor hallway. Kotetsu counted to the third one on the left, and pushed it open.

It was a cozy little room. Both the ceiling light and a lamp on the bedside table had been turned on, casting a soft glow over the room. The queen-sized bed had been covered with a hand-made quilt and a pair of fluffy pillows sat on top of it. A small empty writing desk with a wooden chair pushed in underneath it sat on front of a window. Kotetsu peeked behind the curtains and saw streetlights illuminating the street they'd driven in on.

He shut and locked the door behind him before pulling off the jeans and the coat, and hanging them on the back of the chair. He wasn't keen on sleeping in the same borrowed t-shirt he'd been wearing for more than a day now, but he didn't really have any other clothing options here.

He turned off the ceiling light and climbed into bed. The bedding was soft and the hour was late, and he dozed off in no time.

 

 

_February 20th, NC 1980  
Earth 2_

 

Kotetsu woke up somewhere around 4:30 in the morning, and couldn't get back to sleep. He tossed and turned for half an hour before finally giving up. He opened his eyes and sat up in bed. The sun hadn't risen yet, but he'd left the desk lamp on last night so it was still bright enough to see.

It was too early to get out there and start the day in someone else's house, and there's wasn't a lot in this particular guest room. Aside from some family photos of the Brooks set up on the desk, the room was pretty impersonal, and probably wasn't used much. He doubted he could entertain himself here for a few hours.

Kotetsu stood up, stretched, and pulled the jeans back on. Might as well go for a walk.

He carefully eased the door open and stepped out into the hallway. Most of the other doors were closed, and he didn't want to be an inconsiderate guest by snooping around to see what was behind them. There was some light coming from one of the ends of the hallway, so he headed for that.

The hallway opened up into a large den whose room lights had been left on, with a couch set in front of a huge TV, and a few sets of bookshelves lining the walls. Kotetsu sat down on the couch, grabbed the remote from where it lay on one of the cushions, and turned on the TV, trying to keep it quiet enough so as not to disturb anyone else in the house who might still be sleeping.

He flipped through the channels before stopping on an old low budget horror movie that looked kind of interesting. A pair of toothy, generically good looking actors ran in terror from a shuffling mob filling the city street behind them.

"Oh Frank!" said the woman. "They're hideous!"

"I know, Carol! We just have to pray that our ammo lasts until morning!"

"But what if we run out, Frank?" Artificial tears shimmered in Carol's eyes.

Frank grabbed her close and pressed her to his manly chest. "Then I'll spend my dying moments thinking about how much I love you, Carol!"

"Oh Frank!"

"Oh Carol!"

Oh brother. Still, it was cheesy enough to be entertaining. He set the remote down on the arm of the couch and curled up to watch. There was nothing like a bad movie when you couldn't sleep.

The monster horde moved closer. They were hideous. The actors had been covered in makeup that made it look like parts of their faces were melting, or that they were covered in huge boils, or that their skin was greatly discoloured. The mob easily pushed through the doors of the mall the main characters had run into.

And then the monsters' eyes and auras lit up blue.

Oh. It was one of _those_ movies.

One of the glowing monsters grabbed a background extra. She screamed as she melted into a pile of poorly animated goo. Frank and Carol looked each other straight in the eye, and bravely pulled out guns.

Kotetsu hit the info button on the remote. _Terror at Twilight!_ , made in NC 1947. That would have been right around the time that anti-NEXT paranoia had peaked. When he was a kid, his Ma would go off on rants about terrible messages in movies like this. Kotetsu had been lucky that his family had been so supportive of his NEXT abilities, even in the face of public fear and mistrust. But still, as a scared nine-year-old with new, uncontrollable superpowers, movies and TV shows full of NEXTs depicted as monsters hadn’t helped with the thought that something was horribly wrong with him.

"I didn't know they still showed garbage like this on TV."

Kotetsu sat up straight at the unexpected voice. He turned to see Barnaby Sr standing in the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand.

"Sorry," Kotetsu said. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

"No, it's fine. I usually go out for a jog in the mornings before work." Barnaby Sr came over to sit on the far side of the couch. "Although I'm bit surprised to find someone else up at this hour too. And watching, well." He gestured to the TV.

"I was channel flipping. Three hundred channels, and there's still nothing on." He crossed his arms. "Although I'm not enjoying this as much as I was."

The movie's background soundtrack starting playing heroic music as Frank and Carol bravely shot the glowing monsters in lovingly gory detail. Kotetsu felt kind of sick at the sight.

Barnaby Sr shook his head. "Things were pretty awful back in the day, weren't they? You couldn't really get away with making something like this now."

He wrapped both hands around his mug and watched a little of the film before continuing. "You know, Emily and I were in college when NEXTs first started appearing. Terry, one of my best friends, manifested powers. Nothing major; he was just able to change his skin like a chameleon. He used to use it as a party trick, to blend into the wallpaper and surprise people. The news networks kept going on about how terrifying NEXTs were and how awful these unexplained genetic mutations were. And all I could think about was how Terry was still the same guy I'd known since I was 6, only with the ability to turn paisley now and then."

He took a drink of his coffee. "So when Mr Legend started going out in costume on his own and making a positive difference with his powers, a group of us got together and thought about using that as a starting point to try and change public opinion. Mr Legend agreed do go along with our venture, Emily and I used our respective family fortunes to help fund the start up costs for Hero TV, Albert organized the format and media contacts, and here we are today. Television's a powerful medium. It can make people afraid, but it can also help break through that fear with strong enough counter images. I don't know if we've completely eradicated public bigotry against NEXTs, but I like to think it's made a difference."

He raised his mug in a small toast. "And to think we owe it all to Vasily Petrov and his love of those silly old century comic books."

Kotetsu mimed toasting right along with him. "To Mr Legend, the greatest hero of them all." He blinked. "Wait, _Petrov_?"

"I wonder whatever happened to Vasily?" Barnaby Sr continued. "He just dropped off the map a while back and no one's heard from him since."

"I've always wondered that myself," Kotetsu said. "I've been a huge fan of his ever since I was kid. I know he took a season off after having some troubles, and then never came back. I kept hoping he would. He, uh, he's kinda the whole reason I wanted to become a hero."

Barnaby Sr looked interested. "Really?"

"Yeah. He, uh, he saved me. When I was twelve, back before Hero TV started up, I was in a bank when it got held up. He showed up to stop the robbers. They took me hostage, I freaked out, and I accidentally threw one into a wall using my powers. I used to hate being a NEXT back then. The other kids at school were afraid of me when they found out I could crush metal with my bare hands, and called me all kinds of horrible names, so I tried to hide it as much as I could and pretend that I was normal. But Mr Legend told me that I didn't have to be afraid of my powers. That they were a gift, and I could use them to help save people. And hearing that from someone like him was so inspiring I made it my goal in life."

He let his hands drop into his lap, and smiled faintly. "Sometimes I think about how different things are for my daughter compared to how they were for me. When my classmates found out about my powers, they shunned me. When she told her friends at school about her powers, they spent a week trying to get her to copy other people's abilities just to see what would happen. I'm happy things are better for her. I dunno if Hero TV's helped with that, but it'd be nice to think so."

The conversation drifted off into silence again. On screen, Carol pulled out a grenade, and Frank lobbed it at the monsters that filled the food court below them. It went off in an expensive-looking explosion, blowing the monsters into gooey pieces.

"Thank you," Barnaby Sr said suddenly.

Kotetsu blinked. "For what?"

"For being a part of this whole project. For being a good, hard working hero and a positive example of how NEXT powers can be used to help people instead of hurt them." He smiled at Kotetsu. "Thank you for being a part of our dream."

Kotetsu looked down at the floor. His cheeks felt flushed. "It's nothing. I'm nobody special, really."

Barnaby Sr stood up. "Well, I should probably get going. You're welcome to keep using the den here if you still can't sleep. Natalia should have breakfast ready around seven or so."

"Thanks," said Kotetsu.

Barnaby Sr wandered out of the room. Kotetsu directed his attention back at the TV. Frank and Carol had started kissing each other passionately in the midst of all the monsters they'd killed as a terrible syrupy love song played over the soundtrack.

Kotetsu hit the mute button. That was about all of this movie he could stand.

He laid his head down on the arm of the couch and closed his eyes for just a minute.

 

A hand on his shoulder shook him awake. He raised his head up off the couch cushion to see Barnaby's green eyes staring at him.

"Whatimezit?" Kotetsu asked.

"Half past nine," Barnaby said. "I'm sorry to wake you, but I have something important I wanted to show you."

Kotetsu sat up on the couch, and rubbed at his eyes until his vision cleared. He'd left the TV on, and the terrible NEXT-slaughtering movie had given way to a morning talk show hosted by an overly perky pair of news anchors, who were showing off clothing for tiny purse dogs. He grabbed the remote from where it'd fallen to the floor while he'd been sleeping and turned the TV off. Barnaby sat down on the other side of the couch and propped a laptop up on his lap.

Kotetsu looked the blond over. "You look tired," he said.

"I didn't get much sleep last night. I was up late doing research." He pulled up the screen of his computer. The desktop was littered with all kinds of open documents.

"Well you've sure been busy," Kotetsu said.

Barnaby nodded. "I thought about what you said yesterday and I wanted to try and figure out what was going on. I didn't, but I found some things. There's a lot more discrepancies in the system than just the one." He pulled up the '77 parole hearing video again. "So, this is the video I showed you yesterday. The one that's supposed to be Maverick, but isn't."

"Right," Kotetsu said.

Barnaby opened up a different video, and fastforwarded several minutes in. "This is Maverick's '73 parole hearing, the first time he was eligible after the fifteen year minimum sentence. And look at that." He pointed to the prisoner in the video.

Kotetsu leaned in to get a better look. The man in the video had a round face and a large mole visible over the frame of his glasses.

"Now that's Albert Maverick," Kotetsu said.

"I thought so. So, something happened somewhere between '73 and '77, but I don't know what. But, I did find out who we're looking at in the second video."

He switched windows to a browser showing an old glossy magazine article. A younger, dark-haired version of the man now claiming to be Albert Maverick was shown being handed over to the police by Stealth Solider, one of the former Hero TV participants.

"Mykola Lozinski. He was arrested by Stealth Soldier in '69 after a string of violent liquor store robberies. But here's the really odd thing about him: he doesn't exist."

"Say what?" Kotetsu said.

"He doesn't have a judicial record, he doesn't have a prison record, he doesn't have a court record. I've emailed the city records division to see if he has a civic record, but they haven't gotten back to me yet. It's like he doesn't exist at all. I only managed to find his name through a Stealth Soldier fansite and an old entertainment magazine article about the episode of Hero TV where they chased him down. Somewhere between those two parole videos, someone erased Mykola Lozinski's identity and used him to replace Albert Maverick. And somehow, no one remembers this happening."

Kotetsu cupped his chin in the palm of his hand. "That sounds like it could be Maverick's doing. But I don't know how he'd manage to do that as a prisoner. He usually needs people to be ... passive when he messes with their heads, and I'm pretty sure prison staff would be on alert against attacks. He had to give everyone at Hero TV drinks spiked with paralytic drugs before he could get into their minds to erase me. There's no way you can do that behind bars."

Barnaby gave him a funny look. "How would Maverick get access to everyone at Hero TV while you were there?"

"Uh, that's a really, really long story," Kotetsu said. "Short version is history's kinda different where I'm from, and Maverick ran Hero TV until Christmas '78."

Barnaby scowled. "I'm almost certain my parents would have serious issues with that."

"Oh believe me, they did," he said, before hurriedly changing the topic. "So, Mykola Lozinski is now Albert Maverick."

"Yes, right. I watched the whole '77 parole video, and Lozinski does seem to actually believe that he's Maverick, although he seems unusually fuzzy in recalling some details and unusually clear in others."

"Yeah, that sounds like someone who's had his brain worked over," Kotetsu said. "So where is the real Maverick then?"

Barnaby drummed his fingers on the keyboard. "I have no idea. He's clearly not in jail, and he's not doing anything public enough that my parents would notice him. And there had to be someone on the outside who deleted the system records, so there's almost certainly an accomplice in all this. They may have helped him re-establish a different identity somewhere out here. Not that there's any way to tell whether he's still in Sternbild or not without additional data."

Kotetsu considered things. "So who could delete judicial records? Could you do it if you really wanted to?"

"I suppose so, but not from the house here," Barnaby said. "I have deeper access into the city records at the Hero TV headquarters. All the major operational staff can access the full Justice Department archives as part of our criminal database resources. There's security programs in place to keep us from tampering with them, but nothing I probably couldn't break through given enough time and a good enough computer."

"Which means we're probably looking for someone at least kinda tech savvy," Kotetsu said. "At least that limits down a little, right?"

"I guess," Barnaby said, not sounding convinced. "I'm not on to work today, but I probably should head in and use the computers there to see if I can find any concrete evidence of tampering with the records. Which'll take a while."

He put his computer into sleep mode. The screen flickered off, and he set it down on the couch. "But there's not much more I can do from here. Might as well get some breakfast before Natalia cleans everything up, and I'm forced to cook for myself."

They headed downstairs to the dining room. A large pot of oatmeal and spread of fruit had been laid out. Kotetsu grabbed a bowl and spooned up some oatmeal.

Emily Brooks waved at them from the far side of the table. She had a large selection of engineering schematics spread out in front that looked to be technical designs for hero costumes. She seemed to be making notes on them.

"You're here late today," Barnaby said.

"The developers sent in proposals for updated suit designs this morning for all five heroes. I wanted a quick look over before I meet with them this afternoon." She tapped her cellphone, sitting on the edge of the stack. "I'm keeping an eye on the time, though. I won't be here too much longer."

Barnaby helped himself to some breakfast and sat down near her. "Any really big changes?"

"Weight concerns mostly. They're proposing using a new, lighter synthetic polymer in the design, and I'm not sure it offers enough of a protective trade-off to replace the old stuff."

Kotetsu dug into the food. He had no idea what they were talking about, but he was probably in favour of whichever provided more protection in a fight.

Emily's cellphone rang. She reached out to hit the button, bringing it up in video mode. Dr Wainwright's face materialized over the receiver.

"Hi, Em."

"Oh, hello Chels." Dr Wainwright appeared to be at work in the lobby of the Hero TV building, if the white doctor’s coat she wore and the street-level windows behind her were any hint. She'd added a burgundy headband that day, to keep her pale blonde hair pushed back from her face.

"I thought you should know that there's a visitor here who asked me to call and see when you guys were coming in."

"I'll be in right away. I'm just finishing up things here."

Dr Wainwright looked amused about something. "Actually, the visitor's here for Wild Tiger. I think he'll want to hurry over for this."

Emily looked over at Kotetsu. Kotetsu frowned. Who'd want to talk to him? He'd already spoken to most of the Hero TV crew, and wasn’t sure how many more people in this universe knew or cared he was here.

"I can drive him back," Barnaby offered. "I'm heading there anyway."

"He should be there in about half an hour," said Emily to Dr Wainwright. "Can you show his guest to one of the empty conference rooms?"

"Sure. I'll take him up to 304. See you soon." The video blinked out as the call disconnected.

Emily turned to face Kotetsu. "Any idea what that might be about?"

"Not a clue," he said. "Guess I'll find out."

 

 

_February 20th, NC 1980  
Earth 1_

 

The beeping of his PDA band woke Barnaby. He groped blindly for his glasses on the bedside table, put them on, and then answered it. "Yes?"

Saito's face appeared in a video feed hovering over it. "Good morning, Barnaby." He wavered. "I notice you're still in bed. I can call back later if this is a bad time."

Barnaby's gaze flicked over to the clock on the wall. Almost ten in the morning. He really had been tired last night. "It's fine. Is there news?"

Saito grinned. "I thought you might be interested to know that I've finished replacing all the ruined parts in the cross-dimensional portal, and I'm ready to start running operational tests on it."

Barnaby sat up stalk straight in bed. "I'll be right over. Please wait until I get there."

"Of course; that's why I called. I'll see you soon." The call disconnected, leaving Barnaby alone in his room.

He got dressed in a hurry, repacked the box, and flagged down a cab outside. He made it to the Hero TV building just after 10:30.


	9. Chapter 9

_Earth 2_

 

They got to the Hero TV building just after 10:30. Barnaby helped get Kotetsu through security, and then headed off to do his own research. Kotetsu took the elevator up to the third floor and hunted for the conference room Dr Wainwright had mentioned. He found room 304 at the end of the hallway, and pushed the door open.

His guest was waiting inside. 

The other man paced anxiously through the room, playing nervously with the hat in his hands. He looked up as Kotetsu entered. There was a sudden heavy silence between the two of them.

"Oh. Wow," said the other Kotetsu T. Kaburagi. He stared intently at Kotetsu, as if noting every detail about his opposite. "Dr Brooks told me about you on the phone, but meeting a doppelganger from another world... This feels really weird."

"My thoughts exactly," Kotetsu said.

Kaburagi gave a nervous grin and put the hat back on. "Yeah, I guess they would be, huh? I woulda come yesterday, but it's hard to make travel arrangements to the big city on a moment's notice."

"I hear you don't live in Sternbild anymore," Kotetsu said. "People kept giving me weird looks when I showed up out of the blue."

"Yeah, I sold my place when I retired from Hero TV and moved back to Oriental Town. Stayed in the family house for a while before getting a little place for me and Kaede."

"So what do you do these days?" Kotetsu asked.

"Oh, I work in the family liquor store," Kaburagi said, a little too energetically. "I thought it was time that I retire from heroing, let someone younger have a chance to break into the field. I was getting old anyway; time to move on."

Kotetsu considered his counterpart's words. "And are you happy there?" he asked.

Kaburagi looked at him. "Say what?"

"Are you happy?" Kotetsu repeated.

"Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?" Kaburagi said. "I get to be there for Kaede all the time, I can help take care of Ma now that she's getting older, I have a job I can actually tell people about. It's great."

Kotetsu looked doubtful about that. "Are you sure? I spent a couple weeks working there during my own time off, and it didn't really go very well. 'Kotetsu, stop messing around with the customers and do inventory.' 'I don't care if that kid was lost or not, Kotetsu, you still missed all your deliveries today.' 'That was really expensive shochu that you destroyed, Kotetsu; it's coming out of your pay.' I think I'd go crazy if I was stuck working with boring ol' Muramasa every day for the rest of my life."

"Well, then what do you do?" asked Kaburagi.

Kotetsu grinned. "I'm still protecting Sternbild as Wild Tiger. Not on the same level as I used to, but that's fine with me."

Kaburagi looked surprised. "O-oh. That's great. You must enjoy that."

"I do," said Kotetsu. He leaned back against the conference table in the centre of the room and eyed his counterpart. "So, how much have your powers decayed?"

Kaburagi blinked. "Wha, what? I don't know what you're talking about."

Kotetsu crossed his arms. "C'mon. You might be able to keep it secret from other people, but you can't hide things from me. I know myself too well."

Kaburagi sighed and dropped his head. His hat hid his eyes. "4'15". I've been trying not to use my powers too much to conserve what I have left. You?"

"A minute even. It kind of levelled off there. It might drop more someday, but I'll face that challenge when I get to it."

Kaburagi looked back up. His brow creased. "But, you're still working as a hero? Aren't you afraid people will find out about the power loss?"

Kotetsu shrugged. "Nah. Everyone already knows. I've got 'Wild Tiger 1-Minute' branded on the back of my suit; it's kinda hard to miss."

"And... you're okay with that?" Kaburagi asked.

"Sure," Kotetsu said. "I tried to hide it for the longest time, and I just ended up hurting everyone I cared about. So I figure I might as well try to be honest about it now." He smiled. "I love being a hero. It's all I've ever wanted to do in life. So if I've only got a minute of power to go on, so what? I already spend most of the time fighting in normal mode, what's a little more? And if it turns out they fade away completely someday, then I'll just become Sternbild's first non-powered hero. I'm not going to let anything stop me from doing what I love."

"I kind of envy you," Kaburagi said quietly. " 'Cause you're right -- I'm really not cut out to work in a small town liquor store. But I'm old for a hero and my powers are going, so I figured that it'd be better to step down and let someone younger and better equipped to take my place. I feel like I've betrayed my vow to Tomoe to keep going as a hero, but--" His shoulders dropped. "--but there's nothing for me in Sternbild anymore. I'd rather try to be a good father to Kaede than stay in a city that doesn't need me."

"Have you told her you were Wild Tiger?" Kotetsu asked.

Kaburagi shook his head. "No. She watches the show a lot. I don't want her to worry about how much damage her stupid Papa took over eleven years. To be honest, she's kind of glad Wild Tiger retired because she's got a huge crush on Desert Sandstorm."

Kotetsu reached over to put a hand on Kaburagi's shoulder. "You really should tell her. She's an amazing kid. She'll handle it well." He thought hit him. He snapped his fingers. "Speaking of Desert Sandstorm, have you ever thought about maybe teaching at the Hero Academy?"

Kaburagi looked at him blankly. "The what?"

"Oh, guess you don't have that here," Kotetsu said. "Uh, in my world, there's a school with a three-year program to help folks learn how to control and use their NEXT powers, in hopes of maybe someday becoming a professional hero. I never went, 'cause that started up way after my time, but I've visited it a couple times and it seems really neat. The students there love getting the chance to talk to veteran heroes."

Kaburagi considered it. "Huh. I've never thought of teaching, but that's kind of an interesting idea."

The phone on the conference table behind them rang. Both Kotetsus looked at it in surprise.

Kotetsu reached over to answer it. Kaburagi backed away to get out of the image. "Hello?" Kotetsu said.

Barnaby's face appeared in the holographic video feed. "Hello, Kotetsu. I am so sorry to interrupt your meeting with your mystery guest, but I've just come across something very important with regards to the question from this morning. Would you mind briefly coming up to the workshop here?"

Kotetsu looked over at Kaburagi. Kaburagi shrugged. "It's fine with me," he said.

"Sure, Bu-, Barnaby. I'll be right up."

Barnaby nodded and the call disconnected.

"Was that the Brookses' kid?" Kaburagi asked.

"Yeah, Barnaby Brooks Jr," Kotetsu said. "He's a good guy."

"Huh. I’d heard that their son worked here, but I've never met him. Didn't really get down to the workshop much unless I was getting chewed out for destroying company tech again."

Kotetsu smiled. "Yeah, I know those lectures well," he said. "I gotta run and see him, but I'll be right back. Do you mind waiting here for me?"

"No, it's fine," Kaburagi said. "I came to Sternbild today just to meet you, so there's not much else planned for the day."

"Great. I will be right back," Kotetsu said, exiting the room.

He headed back to the workshop. Barnaby was sitting at his desk, reading through things on his computer screen. He looked up when Kotetsu approached.

"Sorry to have to interrupt your meeting. Who'd your guest turn out to be?"

"Me," Kotetsu said. "Or at least the me from this universe. I think that was one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had."

Barnaby looked mildly surprised. "Interesting. I haven't actually spoken to the Wild Tiger here, although I certainly saw quite a bit of him throughout his run on the show. Is he much like you?"

"Kind of. Kind of not," Kotetsu said. "Funny how the little things in life can change you more than you'd ever suspect." He sat down on the corner of Barnaby’s desk. "So what's the big news?"

"Oh, yes." Barnaby took a breath. "The city records division just emailed me back. It turns out that they do have a couple records for Lozinski which haven't been purged from their systems. He was married for a few years, but had a very acrimonious divorce filed right before his crime spree." He brought up the image of a marriage certificate onscreen. "The woman he was married to? She was named Margarete Rotwang."

Kotetsu's eyes widened. "Is that?"

Barnaby nodded. "Her civic record notes that she is the sister of Dr Ernst Rotwang."

"Huh. And you think he messed with all the city record systems?"

"It's a high possibility. He'd be able to access and edit all the judicial records from here, and with no one paying any particular attention to Lozinski after his arrest, no one would have noticed the disappearance of all his data."

"Knew I didn't trust that guy," Kotetsu said.

"That's not all," Barnaby said. "I also did a little poking into the Internet traffic logs of his work machines. Most of it's fairly innocuous stuff, but it seems he's been sending out large encrypted documents to an outside protected server almost every two weeks for ages now."

He turned to look at Kotetsu straight on. "And that server's registered to the Robot Fighting League."

Kotetsu crossed his arms. "I think we should go find out what Dr Rotwang's been doing in that secret lab of his."


	10. Chapter 10

_Earth 1_

 

Lab 2 was a huge room, located right next to staff physician Dr Chiu's medical offices. It had stood empty and unused ever since they'd moved most of their development team over to the new annex wing. Tremblay's machine looked awfully small set up against large the back wall.

Agnes had taken over the situation inside the lab by the time Barnaby had arrived, organizing her film crew. Saito stood by helplessly, waiting patiently by the completed machine.

"I take it we're going to be filming all this," Barnaby said to him.

Saito nodded. "I told Ms Agnes we were going to start running tests, and she decided it would make a good filming opportunity. Aside from that Electrolyte fellow, things have been pretty slow this month, especially for the Second League, and I suppose breaking the laws of quantum physics makes for more interesting viewing than another week of stopping purse snatchers."

Barnaby watched Agnes wrangle her film crew into position. A boom mike op and an editor stood by as she focused on the camera op. "Try to get some good close up shots of Barnaby and whatever this thing does," she told her. "I want to edit all this down into this week's Second League feature segment."

"And you--" She turned to point at Barnaby. "--go suit up. I don't care if we're just running tests right now, I want you fully ready to go in case something happens."

"Yes ma'am," he said.

"I also want to get one or two of our regular First League heroes here as support for when we open this portal thing for real, but since we've split most of the team up today between that mid-day cooking show and the charity event at St Isidore of Seville Hospital, we'll have to check to see who's free. But for the moment, we should we fine with just you here. So hurry up so we can start this thing."

Barnaby headed up a few floors and changed into his hero suit as quickly as was proper to get things set up right. When he re-entered the lab, Agnes looked Barnaby over and gave him an approving nod. "Good. Everyone else ready? Excellent. Let's start." She motioned to the camera op, and the camera's red recording light turned on.

Barnaby straightened his posture to look better on film as he stood by, anxiously waiting to see what would happen. Saito looked nervous and uncomfortable to be the focus of the camera's attention.

"This is the first operational test of the afternoon," he said. "We're just going to make sure that the machine was successfully repaired, and that it performs as specified in the original schematics." He picked up a cube about the size of a shoe box, covered in Apollon Media logos, and showed it off to the camera. "I've put some basic data sensors in here, and we're going to try pushing it through. Hopefully we'll continue to get a feed through the hole in reality, so we can find out if this is safe to traverse, and if we can still locate Tiger on the other side."

He set the box down next to the diagnostic monitor he'd attached to the machine, reached over to the machine's front console, and hit a sequence of buttons.

It whirred to life. The bottom two lasers of the set attached to the ceiling let out a whine as they charged up, and then fired at the gateway frame.

A small, glowing white circle expended within the frame from a dot to something roughly the size of a dinner plate. Saito placed the box on the floor, and carefully pushed it through with a metal stick. The box dissolved easily through the light.

Saito focused his attention back on the diagnostic monitor screen. "I'm still receiving a signal from the sensors," he said, partially for the camera, "so it's still in existence and reporting from wherever it's ended up. I'm going to try and get a better reading on Tiger's precise location from across the quantum divide."

The whining noise from the lasers continued to grow louder even as he spoke. There were bright warning sparks from the main console right before all the lights in the room suddenly died. The tiny glowing portal collapsed in on itself, and Barnaby could hear the machine slowly grind to a halt. Barnaby switched on the night vision mode in his helmet, and was nearly blinded when the light mounted on the TV camera turned on.

"What happened?" Agnes demanded. The camera light swept the room like a spotlight, leaving long shadows in its wake.

Saito used its light to look over the machine. "The machine's operational processes used in keeping the portal open seems to have drawn so much power that they flipped the breaker for this floor. Nothing appears to be damaged, but we'll probably need to reconfigure the power settings slightly and hook up a portable generator or two to the console to stop it from happening again."

"Do we have those?" she asked.

"Yes, we should, although it'll take a little time to set everything up."

"Fine. Whatever," Agnes said. "It'll give me time to call the other heroes. Just get these lights back on."

 

 

_Earth 2_

 

Kotetsu and Barnaby headed straight up to Barnaby's parents' office. The secretary waved them by, and Barnaby knocked twice on the door before pushing it open. His parents were going over the same schematics Emily had been looking at earlier that morning, making more notes on the designs. The TV in their office was on, showing live footage straight from the Hero TV cameras of a huge fire.

"What's the emergency today?" Barnaby asked, gesturing at the TV.

"Someone set a fire in one of the big tenement buildings downtown," said Emily. "We've sent all the heroes down there to help rescue the civilians and control the blaze so it doesn't spread any further."

"Are they doing okay?" Kotetsu asked.

"It should be fine," Emily said. "The fire department's arrived; they're mostly there for crowd control and support."

"Did you need something?" asked Barnaby Sr.

Barnaby took a breath before launching into his talk. "We suspect that Dr Rotwang may be involved in unlawful activities and is likely the source of our data leak to the Robot Fighting League."

Both Doctors Brooks focused their full attention on their son with that statement. "Are you sure about that?" Barnaby Sr asked. "That's a pretty strong accusation."

"I know, but look at these web activity logs." He handed printouts of the data to his parents, and told them everything he and Kotetsu had discovered earlier. His parents looked shocked at the realization that Maverick had somehow escaped jail.

"If what you're saying is true, than we have a much bigger problem on our hands than just corporate espionage," Emily said. "Albert not being in jail can't mean anything good."

"I think we need to go have a chat with Ernst, and see if he can answer these claims," Barnaby Sr said.

Emily nodded. "Oh, definitely." She looked at Barnaby and Kotetsu. "These are your discoveries. Did you want to come too?"

"Yes, for sure," Barnaby said.

Kotetsu considered things before answering. "Could we meet down in there in maybe fifteen minutes? I need your son's help with something first."

All three Brooks looked a little puzzled by his request. "All right. What do you need?" asked Barnaby.

Kotetsu led Barnaby to the hallway outside of his parent's office before continuing. "I think I should get suited up before we go talk to Dr Rotwang."

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. "Why would you do that?"

"Well," Kotetsu said, leaning against the wall, "I ran into Dr Rotwang twice in my universe, and both of those times ended with me in horrible pain. Even if we're just talking, I'd rather be safe than sorry."

Barnaby still didn't look convinced. "Well, if you're sure... You suit is still at my workstation, if you need it."

"Would you... Would you mind helping me get it on?" Kotetsu asked, looking a little embarrassed. "There's usually a mechanized process for getting all the pieces attached in the right places, and I can't reach all the latches on the back on my own."

"All right," Barnaby said. "I think I should be able to get everything connected properly after all the poking I did at it yesterday."

The two of them took a quick detour down to the workshop, and Kotetsu popped into an empty storage room to change while Barnaby readied the suit. It felt good to finally change outfits, even if it was just into his suit liner.

Barnaby had the suit prepped and off the costume stand by the time Kotetsu had changed. He helped Kotetsu put the armour on piece by piece.

"You know," Barnaby said, as he helped connect the arm pieces to the chest piece, "I've worked on a lot of these in various stages of design, but I've never actually helped put a costume _on_ a hero before."

"Seems like you're doing just fine," Kotetsu said. He flexed his fingers. "You should spend more time working directly with heroes."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Barnaby mumbled. Kotetsu tried to hide his amusement.

Barnaby finally finished hooking everything up, and handed Kotetsu his helmet. "If that feels okay, we should go back to meet up with my parents."

Kotetsu nodded. "Let's do this."

Emily and Barnaby Sr were waiting outside Lab 2 for them. They both looked surprised to see what Kotetsu was wearing. "Are you expecting something more dangerous than a conversation?" Barnaby Sr asked, looking Kotetsu over.

Kotetsu's answer was cut short as the door to the clinic opened and Dr Wainwright stepped out. She looked surprised to see the whole group there, and especially at Kotetsu.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, her gaze flicking from person to person.

"We need to speak with Dr Rotwang immediately about some unauthorized activities," said Emily.

Dr Wainwright looked concerned. "I hope it's nothing major. He's always been very nice to me," she said. "I suppose I should let you know that Dr Rotwang has a guest in there with him right now."

Emily frowned. "Does he now."

"I think the man said his name was Andrew MacKay," said Dr Wainwright. "He's been visiting on a fairly regular basis for a while now."

"I don't think I've ever seen that name come up on the visitor entry log," said Barnaby Sr.

Dr Wainwright shrugged. "I don't control Dr Rotwang's guests; I just see them go by."

"Can you describe him?" Kotetsu asked.

"Older. Heavyset. Usually wears a hat, so I've never gotten a good look at his face as he passes by."

"Could you identify him if you saw in there?" Emily asked.

"Oh, of course," Dr Wainwright said. "I'd be glad to point him out."

"Then you might as well come with us to see what he's doing," Barnaby Sr said.

A large numerical keypad lock was set into the wall next to the doors to Lab 2. Barnaby Sr typed his command override code into it and the light above turned green. The doors slid open.

The huge lab space was full of androids in various states of creation. Circuit boards and extra limbs and blank-eyed faces connected to limbless torsos covered the tables. The whole thing gave Kotetsu the creeps.

Barnaby picked up part of a half-completed android leg from a table near the door to examine the circuitry. He frowned deeply. "A lot of this looks cribbed from my grad project. How was this appropriated?"

There were two high backed chairs on the far side of the room, with a pair of hot tea cups on the table in between. Dr Rotwang rose from the chair facing them, and walked towards the group at the door.

"How did you get in here?" he asked.

"Emily and I have access codes to everything in the building," Barnaby Sr said. "Ernst, what is this? None of these things are listed on your progress reports." He picked up a half-finished android arm off one of the closest tables. "These look like parts for the RLF's cage fighters."

"Ah, I knew things here were too good to last forever," said Rotwang. "They're my robots, obviously. As you can see, I've been busy. And as much as I enjoy having a good salary and research facilities all of my own, I have no desire to spend my entire life in the service of genetic freaks. The Chairman of the Robot Fighting League offered me a most wonderful deal and I accepted."

"I thought you were working on a human-like AI interface system?" Barnaby asked.

Rotwang scoffed. "That? Oh please. I perfected it months ago." He grabbed a remote control from one of the tables near his desk and pointed it at the group.

Dr Wainwright's face went slack and emotionless, and she dropped to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

"What did you do to her?" Kotetsu demanded.

Rotwang chuckled. "Oh, don't worry. She'll be fine." He strode across the room to Dr Wainwright's prone form. "I should know. After all, I built her."

He kicked her in the side. "Isn't that right, Cis?"


	11. Chapter 11

_Earth 1_

 

They got the lights back on after a quick trip to the building's maintenance room, and Saito busied himself with fixing the power setup. It only took fifteen minutes or so to drag a couple of portable generators back to Lab 2, with Barnaby's help, and to get them attached to the machine. Saito kept tinkering with the setup until he seemed happy with it.

Agnes had pulled out her cellphone and gotten busy with her own task while they were working on it. After several rounds of phone calls with the First League heroes, she managed to pull Rock Bison out of his previous commitments and get him back to the building. He waved to Barnaby as he showed up in Lab 2, suited up in his hero armour with his helmet cradled under his arm.

"Long time no see," Antonio said.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," Barnaby said.

Antonio grunted. "Nah, it's nothing. I really hate going on that cooking show. The host always makes beef-related jokes about me. I'd rather be here, helping to fix whatever mess Kotetsu’s gotten himself into this time."

"He's accidentally stranded himself in a parallel universe," Barnaby said matter of factly.

Antonio raised an eyebrow at the statement. "Well _that's_ a new one, even for him. Can they bring him back?"

"That's what we're hoping," Barnaby said.

Agnes noticed Antonio's arrival and made a beeline straight for him. Barnaby smirked inwardly as Antonio stood up straighter for her.

"Bison, so glad you could make it," she said. "You've been briefed on what's going on?"

"Tiger's accidentally ended up in Wonderland?"

"Something like that, yes. I want you here focused on general defence. We're opening a glowing rip in space to who knows where, and I don't want anything from there getting out into our world." She pointed a thumb towards the machine, where Saito was disconnecting the last of the testing gauges. "Nothing but Tiger or Barnaby comes back out through this thing; is that clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and tugged his helmet back on.

"Is everything ready to go again? Good. Five, four, three." She counted off the last two numbers on her fingers, and pointed to Saito as the camera's red recording light blinked on.

"I believe I've fixed the electrical overload issues," he said, still looking uncomfortable to be on film, "and we know from preliminary testing that the machine seems to work, so we're going to progress to the secondary phase. If the breakers and backup generators hold, we should be able to open the full portal, enabling travel between our world as we know it, and an alternately phased parallel universe where we believe Wild Tiger is trapped."

He reached over to the main console to start the process again, and the lasers began charging once more.

 

 

_Earth 2_

 

The bottom dropped out of Kotetsu's stomach at the sound of that name. He might not have been able to recognize the face, since he'd spent most of that fight getting painfully acquainted with a brick wall before getting knocked clean out, but he recognized her name well enough.

"Ooh, we're in trouble," he said.

Barnaby looked up from where Cis was lying on the floor to stare at Kotetsu. "Why?"

"She's a combat android. I've fought her before. It did not end well for me."

Barnaby's eyes when even wider. "Oh. That's not good."

Rotwang neared the group, and grabbed Cis. He picked her up roughly by the neck and dragged a hand across her cheek, pushing her hair off her face. Cis hung bonelessly in his grasp.

"Isn't she something?" he said. "I've spent _so_ many years working on her, trying to get her up to this stage in development. I suppose I should be thanking you all for the access to your resources."

"And what about Chelsea Wainwright?" asked Emily.

"There is no 'Chelsea Wainwright'," Rotwang snapped. "She's just a set of programmed adaptive synaptic responses booted into Cis' hardware. I threw in enough personality traits and stimulus responses to seem human enough, and let her learn from encounters with others. And thanks to Dr Chiu's ... accident, I made sure she'd get the staff physician position just so she'd be close enough for me to keep updating the AI program without it seeming suspicious."

He let her go, and Cis dropped back to the floor, arms bent out at odd angles.

"Although I do wonder why you've only realized this all now, after years of my getting away with it," he said. He sneered at them. "So busy playing guardians to this city, you can't even see what's going on right under your noses."

"We took a look at Maverick's most recent parole video," Kotetsu said. "It's pretty obvious that that it's not him in it."

Rotwang seemed to really notice Kotetsu's presence for the first time. He frowned at him. "Who are...?" He paused, and then raised an eyebrow. "Wild Tiger, is it? Where _did_ you get that thing? I don't believe I've seen schematics for that particular suit yet."

"We know about Mykola Lozinski," Barnaby said, redirecting the conversation.

Rotwang snorted in derision. "Oh, Mykola. My stupid, stupid, big-mouthed ex-brother-in-law. Couldn't keep himself out of trouble once he started drinking, always expected Margarete to rescue him, even after the divorce. Good riddance to him."

"Which still doesn't explain _why_ he's the one claiming to be Albert Maverick," Barnaby Sr said.

"He was my cellmate," came a voice from the other side of the room. The other chair pushed back from the table, and Albert Maverick rose to face the group assembled at the door. He gave the Brooks a smile that never reached his eyes.

"Barnaby, Emily. How lovely to see you both again after so long." His gaze continued past them to settle on Barnaby. "And Junior too. How fortunate. It seems as though you've grown into a fine young man, although I hear that you're trying to keep that power of yours hidden. What an utter waste of talent. With your NEXT abilities and your natural good looks, you could be a real star if you just applied yourself."

Barnaby bristled, but said nothing. His hands shook as he clenched them into fists.

"Albert, you're supposed to be in prison," Emily said.

"I'm aware," he replied. "Not that it's stopped me so far."

"And why aren't you there now?" asked Barnaby Sr.

Maverick picked up one of the tea cups from the table and took a sip, seemingly unperturbed by everything. He savoured the drink before answering.

"Well, Mykola spent an awful lot of time ranting about his family, including his brother-in-law, who happened to work as a robotics developer for Hero TV. A couple warden-approved letters and a meeting or two later, the two of us realized that we shared a mutual dislike for several things about Hero TV." He smiled again. "Were you aware that your company supplies some of the key bits of technology used in the city's prisons? It's truly amazing just how much you can control remotely if you know how." He rubbed one hand over the other. "And have some other gifts at your disposal."

The Brooks stared in shock. Kotetsu could feel the tension in the room, thick like summer heat.

"And thanks to an unfrozen offshore account of mine, and Dr Rotwang's expertise in developing robots and system access, we started on our new project. And it's doing quite well, as I'm sure you know. I suppose I should thank you all for that. We do use a fair helping of your developments in improving our top-rated robot fighters."

He took another drink of his tea, and then set the cup back down on the table.

"Which, then, leaves the question of what to do now. I assume that you'll try to have me sent back to prison, and I can't let you do that. There's big plans to franchise the Robot Fighting League out to other cities in the next few years, and we can't have you preventing that, now can we?"

He spun the high-backed chair around on its base to face the group assembled at the door and took a seat. He rested his elbows on his legs and steepled his fingers together.

"My initial plan had been to simply to undermine this program to the point of cancellation by using something much more populist and controllable, and ruin you financially. But since you've found out about all this--" He gestured generally at the contents of the room. "--there's only one thing to do."

He looked over at his partner. "Dr Rotwang, if you would."

Rotwang smiled at the group with menacing glee etched on his features.

"Cis? Attack."

Cis' vacant eyes flared red as she launched herself to her feet.


	12. Chapter 12

_Earth 1_

 

The lasers started whining as they charged. Barnaby prepared himself for the possibility of another disappointing overloading of the breaker, but Saito's modifications seemed to be working so far. He stood by at the ready as the scientist kept a close eye on the diagnostic monitors.

Saito pointed at one of the computer screens. "Here, you can see the power level the machine is currently using." The camera op moved in closer to get a clearer shot of the monitor. "According to the schematics we acquired from Tremblay's files," Saito continued, "the machine needs to be running at least 90% power in order to keep the full portal open and stable. We overloaded the breakers here running the small test portal at 75% power, so we're going to keep a close eye on it this time to make sure that the additional power regulation systems I've put in are working."

The camera op took a few steps backwards to film a wider view of the scene. Barnaby could see Agnes standing right behind the camera, her arms folded and her painted nails tapping excitedly against her arm. Rock Bison waited causally over on the side of the room, watching the whole scene unfold with interest.

"We're at 50% power," Saito read off for the camera. "60%. 75%. 82%. 91%."

The lasers' whining reached a painful pitch, and the main console started to shake slightly as the machine reached full power. It sparked once, but held steady, which Barnaby took as a good sign.

"100% power," Saito said.

The lasers fired, and white light filled the portal's gateway.

 

 

_Earth 2_

 

Cis launched herself at the Brooks. Kotetsu threw himself in between to intercept her mid-run, taking the full brunt of her attack. His suit absorbed most of it, but not enough to keep him from feeling the force of her strength rattle him. Everything turned slightly blue as he activated his powers to hold her back. Cis continued staring blankly at him, even as she tried to push him out of the way.

Kotetsu turned his head just enough to see the Brooks at the edge of his heads-up display screen. "Hide behind something while I deal with her," he told them. They nodded.

Rotwang let out a loud dismissive laugh, even as the three of them scrambled away. "Hold her off? A washed-up nothing like you? Oh, I'd like to see you try. I think I'll enjoy watching her crush you."

Cis fell back, and then suddenly drove a punch straight at Kotetsu's midsection. Her fist connected, and the force of it threw him across the room. He slammed into the back wall of the lab, and slid down to the floor. Stars swam across his vision, and he shook his head to try and clear them. There was a large box next to where he'd landed -- which, weirdly enough, had the Apollon Media logo plastered all over it -- and he used it to help push himself back up to his feet.

A spot near him on the back wall was starting give off a bit of a weird white glow, but there was no time to stop and consider why that might be.

Cis slowly shifted back from her attack pose into a normal standing position, and scanned the room for Kotetsu. Kotetsu took the opportunity to see where all the others were. Maverick was still sitting in his chair calming sipping tea, with Rotwang having moved over to one of the large control consoles behind him to input commands for Cis. Emily and Barnaby Sr had hidden themselves down behind one of the many work tables scattered around the lab, out of sight of the robot but visible from the back of the room.

Barnaby was crouched down, and seemed to be slowly making his way towards where Rotwang stood.

Cis' gaze finally locked on Kotetsu, and she turned to face him fully. Her shoulders drew back as she geared up to fight him again.

Kotetsu grabbed the Apollon Media box and hurled it at Cis. It slammed into her head, knocking her off balance and forcing her back a step. She froze in place as she tried to readjust her settings.

Kotetsu knew he was just going to get pummelled if he kept on like this. Cis was much stronger than he was, even with what was left of his powers, and she didn't feel pain like a human did. Even if he came up with something brilliant before his minute ran out, the odds were still stacked heavily against him.

There was a cry of surprise from the side of the room. Kotetsu turned to see that Barnaby had jumped Rotwang and was trying to grab the remote from his grip. The older man elbowed Barnaby in the stomach to push him off.

Barnaby backed up a step and put a hand to his stomach, but never took his eyes of Rotwang. "Shut her down," Barnaby said coldly.

Rotwang snorted. "Oh please. As if just asking would make me stop." He flicked off the back of the remote, grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers, and ripped out the circuitry. "Whoops," he said, letting the pieces fall to the ground.

Barnaby visibly seethed as he watched the bits of broken remote control clatter to the floor. He balled his hands into fists, but made no move towards Rotwang.

"I'm asking you for a second time: shut her down," he said. His voice was hard and emotionless.

"Or what are you going to do, use your freakish powers on me?" Rotwang sneered. "Oh yes, you can try and hide it all you want, but, but I know what kind of _thing_ you are, Junior. You are a genetic aberration that should not exist. The public has been so blinded by all the theatrics this show puts forth that they're willing to accept monsters like you lot, but I know better."

Barnaby glared at Rotwang with cold anger that Kotetsu recognized as a major warning sign. "That is _it_. I have had it with you."

Barnaby's eyes and aura flared blue. He socked Rotwang in the face, knocking the older man into a wall. Rotwang groaned and slumped down to the floor, unconscious.

Barnaby flexed out his fingers. "It feels so good to finally do that," he said.

"I thought you said you didn't use your powers," Kotetsu called.

"I said that I really don't _like_ to," Barnaby said "That doesn't mean I won't if needed."

"Couldja help me out here, then?" Kotetsu asked.

Barnaby frowned. "I... I don't know. I don't have any actual combat experience or training. I don't think I'd be able to do much more than just get in your way." His determined expression returned. "But there is something I can do to help."

He turned Rotwang's control panel towards him and started reading it over. "I'm going to try and see if I can override Dr Rotwang's control system and do a full reboot of Dr Wainwright. We don't need to destroy her; we just need to override her combat android programming with Dr Wainwright's personality, and she'll stop fighting us. Keep her busy."

"Easier said than done," Kotetsu muttered.

There was a hard metallic sound as a steel work table flew at him. Kotetsu barely ducked out of the way in time to avoid it knocking his head clean off, but wasn't fast enough to avoid Cis lunging at him with a metal work stool. The stool hit him straight on, knocking the breath out of him. She punched him again as he gasped for air, and he skidded back towards the centre of the room before bumping into a cart full of work tools.

This was no good. He was alone, he was the only one in the room capable of fighting for real, he was burning through his only minute of NEXT power and she'd beaten him to a pulp back when he'd had five to go on. He was going to lose, and badly. He needed a miracle. He needed--

A thought unexpectedly hit him like a brick.

"Three oh four!" he yelled at Barnaby.

"What?" Barnaby looked up at Kotetsu, confused until understanding suddenly hit. "Oh! Right!" He started searching for something on the desk.

Kotetsu had no time to watch Barnaby as Cis rushed him again. She grabbed for his shoulders but he caught her hands mid-attack. They stayed there frozen, caught in each other's grips. Cis kept pushing relentlessly forward, her empty eyes focused only on Kotetsu. Kotetsu grit his teeth and concentrated on trying to keep her from moving forward. Any slip-up and she'd knock him into a wall again.

The countdown numbers on the corner of Kotetsu's heads-up display turned bright red as they hit ten seconds to go. Well, there went his powers. He had to hope his backup plan would pay off. With his last bit of super strength, he dropped backwards to judo flip Cis forward into the wall at the front of the room. She hit it hard before landing in a pile of scattered android pieces on the floor. One of her arms had broken at an odd angle, and she was having trouble getting back up on her feet.

"Wild Tiger. Stop."

Kotetsu turned away from Cis and tried to find the source of the voice.

He froze.

Maverick had grabbed a laser rifle from one of the lab benches and had it pointed at Emily and Barnaby Sr. The scientists looked terrified as the huddled together. Across the room, Barnaby had stopped typing, his face a mix of terror and anger.

"Either your surrender, or I kill them for real this time. And I will do it," Maverick said. "Put your hands up, and show me your eyes."

Kotetsu swore to himself. There was absolutely no way he could knowingly let harm come to any version of Bunny's parents. He flipped his faceplate open to glare at Maverick and prove that his NEXT powers were dormant, and slowly raised his hands up in the air.


	13. Chapter 13

_Earth 1_

 

The laser beams bounced between the edges of the metal gateway frame before solidifying into one solid, glowing mass. It quivered slightly, and Barnaby could almost make out faint shapes and figures on the other side.

There was a palpable feeling of excitement in the room at the realization that it had actually worked. Barnaby uncrossed his arms and took two steps over until he was standing directly in front of the portal, staring into the white void.

His gaze flicked over to Saito. "And you're sure this is stable?" he asked quietly.

"Should be," Saito answered, facing away from the camera. "I can't guarantee how long we can keep this open, even with the backup generators, but it should be safe enough."

Barnaby nodded slowly. "Okay."

He took a deep breath, and stepped through the white light.

On the other side of the portal was every single nightmare he'd ever had for the last 22 years.

 

 

_Earth 2_

 

There was a scream of pure rage from the back of the room, and then a red and black blur threw itself at Maverick. The laser gun flew out of Maverick's hand and skittered across the floor as the attacker slammed into him.

It took Kotetsu a second to grasp what he was seeing. " _Bunny?_ " he said, with equal parts surprise and disbelief.

Over behind the computer terminal, Barnaby's eyes went wide. He gaped at the sight. "What?"

The pink parts of Bunny's suit lit up as he slammed Maverick into the floor. The old man's head bounced once against the ground, knocking his glasses askew, and opening a gash on the side of his face where the metal frames sliced across his skin.

Bunny dropped himself on top of Maverick, pinning him down. "You!" he yelled, shaking him some more. Maverick's head kept bouncing against the hard concrete floor, leaving him woozy, "I can't ever forgive what you did to me. What you took from me! What you did to my head!" He pulled back his arm in preparation for a punch.

"Bunny! Stop! He's not the same one," Kotetsu yelled.

Bunny froze at the sound of Kotetsu's voice. His fist stayed suspended in midair, quivering with the restrained force behind it. It was impossible to see Bunny's expression underneath the helmet or judge what was going through his head, but Kotetsu made no move to actively try and stop him. There was a long tense moment where the only sound in the room was Cis still struggling to get up, before Bunny let out a deep breath and lowered his head. He let the fist drop, and then pushed himself up to his feet. Maverick continued lying on the floor, letting out a soft moan.

Kotetsu let out the breath he'd been holding before starting in on the questions. "Bunny, how did you... What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you, obviously," Bunny said, working to force his tone back to a normal controlled level. "Not that you made it easy for me, what with destroying the one working inter-dimensional portal generator and all."

"Yeah, well, how was I to know?" Kotetsu said. "But, thanks. And while I'm glad you're here and all, I need to deal with things here first."

Bunny turned his head slightly towards where Maverick lay on the floor, still disoriented and bleeding from the cut. "What's the situation?"

"Maverick's still a puppet master who managed to escape from a life sentence in jail, the doctor's a killer robot who I'm in the middle of fighting, and I've used up my minute of power. Couldja help me out here?"

Bunny nodded. "Of course," he said confidently. "What's a partner for?"

Kotetsu flipped the face plate on his suit back down. "Then let's do this."

Cis finally pulled herself back up to her feet. Her white doctor's coat had fallen off, leaving her arms bare. Her left arm was badly twisted, with the artificial skin ripping to reveal the metal framework and cybernetics underneath. She still kept staring blankly ahead, not paying any attention to her damage.

Her head moved back and forth between Kotetsu and Bunny before she focused in on Bunny and rushed forward at him.

She swung at him in an uppercut. He fell back, but not fast enough. Her good fist socked him in the chin, snapping his head up and knocking his helmet clean off. Bunny kicked it out of the way as it hit the ground, instead of trying to pick it up.

Kotetsu could hear Barnaby let out a gasp over on the side of the room, and he smiled just a bit. Well, he'd told the kid all about Bunny. No reason to be that surprised in seeing him in person.

Bunny kicked out at Cis again. He managed to land one of his hits. She was knocked back, but readjusted, swinging her bad arm at his unprotected head. He ducked, and she followed through with a side kick.

It connected to his stomach, driving him back. He took a defensive position to block her follow up blow, before countering with a series of fast kicks. The third one knocked her back, but she caught the floor with her hand at just the right angle to stay up on her feet.

She grabbed the laser gun that Maverick had dropped, pointed it level at the two heroes, and fired. Kotetsu and Bunny dove in opposite directions to avoid the blast. A second shot caught Kotetsu on the shoulder, and blasted off a large chunk off his shoulder guard armour. He winced in pain. He was going to get yelled at later for that.

He ducked behind one of the work tables, trying to take some cover while he plotted out what to do. He poked his head out to see where Bunny had ended up, only to duck back behind the table quickly, just in time to avoid getting shot again.

There was a loud metal clang from across the room. Kotetsu peeked out a second time to see Cis crumple to the floor, revealing a focused Kaburagi holding a metal work stool behind her.

He held the serious look a second longer before breaking out in a grin. "That was pretty cool of me, huh?" he said, putting the stool down.

Bunny looked back and forth between Kotetsu and Kaburagi. "Who is this?" he asked suspiciously.

"Bunny, meet my doppelganger from this universe," Kotetsu said. "Other me, meet my partner from my universe."

"Nice to meet you," Bunny said politely, his tone implying that he'd demand fuller answers about this from Kotetsu later.

"Gotta say, I was kind of surprised to get a call from Brooks while I was waiting around for you to come back. Not that I'm complaining." He gestured towards Cis. "Any particular reason there's an android trying to kill you?"

"Long story, tell ya later," Kotetsu said.

"Got it!" Barnaby suddenly yelled.

Cis' eyes shoot open again. As Kotetsu watched, the red colour drained out of her them, leaving blue behind. She stayed perfectly still for a moment, before blinking. She pushed herself up onto her knees, and reached up with her good hand to rub her forehead.

"I feel like I've been run over by a truck. What happened?" asked Dr Wainwright. She let her hand fall back down, looked around, and was visibly taken aback. "What happened to this place?"

Kotetsu flipped up the face plate on his helmet. "How much do you remember about what just happened?" he asked.

"I was standing by the door with everyone, and then... Things just blanked out," she said. "I can't remember how I ended up here, on the floor."

Kotetsu nodded. He'd kind of expected that. "I hate to tell you this, but, uh..." He paused. "You did this."

"You appear to be a robot," Bunny added matter-of-factly.

Dr Wainwright shook her head in disbelief. "What? No. It couldn't possibly be."

Kotetsu gestured silently towards her other, damaged arm. She raised it up into her field of vision and gasped, staring in shock at the twisted metal protruding from underneath the synthetic skin.

"Wha, I, how?" she stuttered. She said nothing more as she kept staring in horror at her arm.

Bunny knelt in front of her. "Perhaps you should find someone to properly examine you. That might help you to better understand what's gone on," he said in his best television persona voice.

"I've called both the police and the show's producer," said Barnaby, coming out from behind the computer desk. "Since the tenement fire is mostly under control, we should have someone here to arrest these two within twenty minutes, depending on traffic."

"Good," said Kotetsu. "And make sure you keep better tabs on them in the system this time."

"I'll make sure to tell them that," Barnaby said. Kotetsu could see him not so subtly watching Bunny with great interest. He wondered if Bunny had noticed any of the other Brooks in the room yet.


	14. Chapter 14

_Earth 2_

 

Barnaby let himself relax a little as he stood back up. It was always a satisfying feeling to end a fight peacefully. It was a shame he wouldn't earn any points for this one, but sometimes it was okay to do things to help people without the camera being there. He was just starting to take a better look at his surroundings when a voice spoke up behind him.

"Barnaby?"

He froze completely at the sound of a familiar, half-remembered voice. He turned around slowly, not quite wanting to believe his ears.

With all the energy and focus of the fight, he'd somehow missed the fact that his parents were somehow there in the room with them. They looked a whole lot older than how he remembered them in his patchwork of memories, but still unmistakably his parents, alive and well. He didn't want to move, didn't want to breathe.

"...Mom? Dad?" he asked quietly.

His Mom gave him a warm smile. "I suppose you're from the same alternate universe as Mr Kaburagi is. How nice to meet another version of our son."

"So what's life like over there?" asked his Dad. "I'm guessing from the looks of things that you ended up using your powers to become a professional hero. Good for you."

"I... Yes, I... I did, but..." He tried to stay composed, but years of emotions kept bubbling up to the surface. His vision started to blur. "But, Maverick, he... That Christmas Eve, he..." He could feel hot tears start to slip out even as he struggled to keep up a poker face. "He killed you."

His parents' eyes went wide with shock. "Oh, _sweetie_ ," his Mom said, before the two of them pulled him into a tight hug. He sobbed silently into his Dad's shoulder as his chest shook from the intensity of what he was feeling.

"That's such a terrible thing to happen," his Dad said. "It must have been so hard for you to deal with all that so young."

Barnaby wanted to let it all out and tell them everything he'd been through over the last twenty years: the nightmares, the quest for revenge, just how much his memory had been spliced and erased and messed with, even his memories of them. But nothing would come but the tears, and he just kept sobbing as his parents held him tight. His Mom reached up to run a hand through his hair, and his Dad just squeezed him tighter.

"Sweetie," his Mom said gently, "you should know that no matter what you've been through, no matter what you've done, no matter what life is like, that we love you. We love you, and we always have, and we always will, even if we're not around there to tell you that in person."

"And we're proud of you," added his Dad. "I know just how much work and dedication and training it takes to become a hero. So promise us that you'll try your best to protect people, like only you can."

"I will," Barnaby managed to squeeze out through the tears. "Thank you so much."

His Mom leaned up to plant a kiss on the side of his head, and his Dad followed suit. 

He felt just a little guilty for getting so much attention from people who weren't really _his_ parents, but it felt so nice getting hugged like this that he didn't want to ever leave their embrace.

 

 

_Earth 2_

 

Kotetsu turned away from watching Bunny get hugged by this world's version of his parents. He felt as though he was intruding on something by private by watching, and Bunny had been through so much tragedy in his life that he deserved something happy like this. He grabbed Bunny's helmet off the floor and tucked it under his arm before flipping up his faceplate.

Barnaby and Kaburagi were waiting for him over on the side of the room by the computer terminal. They kept stealing quick glances at each other, but not actually saying anything. 

Barnaby watched Bunny with interest. "So, that's your 'Bunny'. I suppose this means that everything you told me about him was true."

"Yep, that's him," Kotetsu said. "He's a good guy. Comes through for me even when I'm not expecting him to."

Barnaby put a hand to his chin."I don't understand what he's doing now, though. I've never had that kind of response to seeing my parents."

Kotetsu looked down. "Unlike you, he, uh, he got home too late on that Christmas Eve."

"Oh," said Barnaby, shock and sympathy in his voice. "I see. I can't even imagine how different that would make things."

"I can now, after everything I've seen here," Kotetsu said. He looked back up. "Thanks for all your help," he said. "It's been a really interesting couple of days, and I couldn't have done it without you. Either of you."

Barnaby and Kaburagi looked quickly at each other again before looking back at Kotetsu. "It was certainly nice meeting you," Barnaby said.

Kotetsu smiled. "I suppose I should make introductions, huh? Barnaby Brooks Jr, this is the Kotetsu T. Kaburagi of this universe. Kotetsu T. Kaburagi, this is Barnaby Brooks Jr, one of the techy guys here." He pointed a thumb towards Bunny who was still busy with Dr & Dr Brooks. "And my partner in my world."

The two of them reached out to do an awkward sort of handshake with each other. "Hi," Kaburagi said.

"Hello," Barnaby responded. There was a pause, before he added, "It's nice to finally meet you. I admired your work back when you were on Hero TV."

"Oh, you watched that?" Kaburagi asked. "Well, I guess you would, seeing as it's the family business and all, huh?" He finally relaxed enough to smile. "Your parents are good people. I liked working for them when I was here. Wish I could have stayed on, but, y'know." He rubbed at his neck. "I'm guessing you're a NEXT too," he said, pointing to Barnaby's still glowing eyes.

Barnaby instinctively reached up towards his face. "Yes, technically, although I don't really use my NEXT powers." He smiled too. "But, oddly enough, I have the exactly same sort of Hundred Power abilities that you do."

Kaburagi perked up, suddenly deeply interested. "No kidding? Wonder how that happened. You hear about people getting similar sort of powers, 'cause there's really only so many kinds of superpowers you could end up with, but the _exact_ same? Wow."

"Oh yes. All abilities increased a hundredfold for five minutes." He chuckled. "It's silly, but when I was young I used to watch your footage to try and figure out how to keep my powers under control."

"You don't say?" Kaburagi looked guilty. "But, ah, about that 'five minutes' thing..."

Kotetsu stood back a bit as the two of them started really conversing with each other. This was quite a bit different than his and Bunny's first real conversation, which had involved a lot of insults and the granting of terrible nicknames, but this might be another start to the same friendship.

"Hey. Kotetsu."

Kotetsu blinked in surprise at hearing Antonio's voice through the speakers in his helmet. He turned to see Antonio leaning through the white glow on the back wall, only the top half of his body visible. Was that how Bunny had appeared here?

Kotetsu waved and Antonio waved back. "Good to see you're still alive," Antonio said.

Kotetsu rolled his eyes. "C'mon. You don't think a little something like getting zapped to a different universe would stop me, did you?" He gestured to Antonio. "So, are you going to stay halfway through like that? 'Cause to be honest, it's a little creepy."

"I'm not coming all the way through," Antonio said. "Doc Saito wants you guys to know that the first generator blew, and that the second one's nearly ready to go. You'll need to come back now before everything breaks down again."

Kotetsu had no clue what Antonio was talking about, but figured it had to be serious. "Gotcha. I'll grab Bunny and be right there."

"Good. I'll see you back on this side," Antonio said before he disappeared back through the portal.

Kotetsu turned back towards Barnaby and Kaburagi. "Well, I hate to interrupt, but I gotta get back to where I belong. Would you see that that pile of clothes in the storage room upstairs gets back to Sky High and Dr Patel? I really appreciate them lending me stuff."

"I'll see that they do," Barnaby said.

Kotetsu pointed at Kaburagi. "And think about what I said, okay? You can do so much more than just sell liquor out in the boonies."

"I will," said Kaburagi. "Today's been ... enlightening."

"Well, thanks again," Kotetsu said, "but if you'll excuse me, my partner and me really have to go."

He looked across the room to see how Bunny was doing.

Bunny was still having a tender moment with his parents. As much as Kotetsu wished he didn't have to interrupt, both of them would probably be stuck here if he didn't.

He closed the space between them, and reached out to rest his hand lightly on Bunny's shoulder. Bunny raised his head to look up at Kotetsu, tears still flowing from his eyes. "Bunny," Kotetsu said gently. "I'm told that we gotta go back. Whatever they're using to keep the glowy thing open won't hold much longer."

There was a pause before Bunny nodded slowly. "Then I suppose we probably should head back, shouldn't we." He let go of Emily and Barnaby Sr, and the two of them untangled themselves from the doppelganger of their son.

"We have to go," Bunny said, struggling to keep his voice steady. "Thank you... Thank you for this. I'm glad I got a chance to meet you here."

Emily leaned in to plant a soft kiss on the side of his head. "Do your best."

"We know you'll be a great hero," said Barnaby Sr.

Bunny gave them a rare, teary smile, before turning away towards the back of the room.

"So then, let's go before we miss our chance," he said.

He and Kotetsu headed for the portal at the back of the room and, one right after the other, stepped through the light.

 

 

_Earth 1_

 

They re-emerged in a different version of the same room. Kotetsu was only half surprised to see that Agnes was there with a camera pointed directly at him. He waved, and the film crew cheered.

Bunny turned to conceal his face from the camera lens.

Off to the side, there was a painfully high pitched squeal coming from a somewhat familiar looking machine console. Saito hit something on the screen, and the portal behind him collapsed in on itself as the noise stopped, leaving the machine to slow to a halt next to a smoking portable generator.

"Good to see you back," Antonio said.

"It's good to be back," Kotetsu said, tossing Barnaby's helmet at him. Antonio caught it easily. "I've really missed everything here."

"I can't wait to see what kind of footage you captured over there," Agnes said eagerly. "We'll need to sit you down for interviews ASAP to find out where you've been the last couple days."

"Can I maybe have a couple minutes to breathe first?" Kotetsu asked. "I just got here, and it's been ... intense today."

"Fine," Agnes said. She turned to the camera op. "Cut filming, and make sure the editing room has what we got here. Tiger, I want you changed and ready for interviews in half an hour."

"Yeah, yeah," Kotetsu muttered as the crew and Antonio started to disperse.

There was a tap on his side. He turned to see an annoyed looking Saito. "And you will tell me _how_ you broke my suit, yes?"

"Yes, definitely!" said Kotetsu. A nervous grin played across his face. "But if you'll excuse me, I need to check on Bunny first," he said, hurrying away.

Bunny was still facing away from the group, towards the wall. Kotetsu put a hand on his shoulder. Bunny looked up, silent tears still running down his cheeks.

"Are you okay?" Kotetsu asked gently.

"No," Bunny said, in a voice stretched thin with suppressed emotion. "But I will be."

Kotetsu put his arm around Bunny's shoulders. "Y'know, I've been thinking a little about what you said, and you're probably right."

Bunny looked confused. "What are you talking about?"

"I probably should call Kaede and ask what she wants to do in Sternbild for her birthday. I haven't been very good at guessing these kinds of things."

Bunny stared at him before breaking out in a thin, watery laugh. "Well, of course. I'm always right."

Kotetsu gave Bunny a squeeze. "C'mon. Let's go change out of these before Agnes pounces on me."

Bunny wiped at his eyes, and the two of them headed off together.

〜〜〜


End file.
